


if i could rewrite the history

by anniebibananie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Captured Princess, Enemies in love, F/M, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 57,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: On her way to Dorne, Myrcella gets taken by Northern forces. A princess for a princess, Robb had said to her. As she settles in amongst the North, Myrcella changes the fate of the future.





	1. myrcella

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShadinAl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadinAl/gifts).



> this is for shadin and because the new season is coming and i guess i have a million ideas. first time writing robb & myrcella so please, please give me motivation to continue. 
> 
> also, i think i know how many chapters this is going to have but it's only properly planned out for the first three so it might adjust at some point. but so far i have a 100% track record of always finishing wip's, so pls join me for this journey.

Myrcella watched Robb write a letter, only stopping to spare her a glimpse once over the desk which separated them. He had been too concerned with whatever it was he was working on to look up before, something she found at least a little insulting. He had bothered to steal her, anyways, and yet he didn’t seem to care now that she was in front of him?

They hadn’t given her a second to pause since the long journey. She wondered, briefly, if they had managed to steal any of her clothes, too. It was a silly wish, a child’s wish. She should have realized by now, that those wishes were gone. Her long, blonde hair was twisted and muddy. The edges of her dress ripped. The only symbol of home left was the necklace hung delicately between her breasts.

“My sister once sent me a letter at the hands of your mother, I believe,” Robb said. “Bend the knee, it said. I did not.”

“And Sansa stayed.” She felt herself flinching already, expecting a hand. It was a stupid act of defiance, and if there was one thing she should have learned from Robb Stark’s sister, it was that you could be beaten for far less.

No hand came. No anger, either. Robb, the great wolf of the north, grew smaller. “Aye. She stayed.” He cleared his throat. “How is she?”

“Alive,” she said. Brutalized, beaten. She could not say more, for none of it was good.

Would she be betraying her family if she said more? She didn’t particularly care all that much for her family, but she loved them all the same. Lannisters and Baratheons were a complicated group of individuals.

“I’m going to get her back,” he said, his fist clenching the quill so tight she was surprised it didn’t crack right in two. She could see now, in this blind anger, that Robb Stark truly was no more than a boy playing at king. He looked so painfully young with the weight of the world on his shoulders. She couldn't imagine Joffrey ever being able to carry it, and she couldn't help but feel impressed by the man in front of her if not at least a little pity. None of them had really been children for long. They could thank their parents for that.

“I’ll have someone show you to a tent, Princess Myrcella. Your uncle stays in a cell, but I hope you can think of yourself as more of a ward than a prisoner.”

“They use the word guest for your sister,” she said with a raise of her brow.

“Guest, then,” he replied, running a hand over his face.

“Could I see my uncle?” she asked, ducking her head before Robb could look back up in fear of looking too dominant.

Sansa had learned to be particularly good at this skill, tricking people into believing her to be daft, silly, submissive. Cersei was smart, but she enjoyed people knowing her intelligence too much to be subtle. Maybe others couldn’t perceive Sansa’s talent, but they were men emboldened by their own ego. Maybe that was one of the curse’s of being a woman—an ability to feel suffering, to see the survival it bred.

“You may see your uncle under the eye of a few of my guards. I would request you clean up first, though. I cannot have him thinking we’re treating you poorly.”

Myrcella dared to meet his eyes, and she was surprised to see something that almost looked like humor. He was a good looking boy near man. He couldn’t be much older than Joffrey if she recalled correctly, and yet there was something stronger, sturdier, more present. His shoulders broader and his jaw sharp.

“Are you going to treat me poorly, Your Grace?” she asked, unable to keep the emphasis off her final two words. Be smarter, she couldn’t help but chastise. And yet, she didn’t seem to bother Robb. Maybe men were bred differently up North.

 _Brutes,_ she could hear her mother hiss.

“You’re dismissed,” he said. His jaw was tight, and she wondered if he was thinking of Lady Sansa trapped in that big, horrifying castle. “I don’t intend to hurt you for crimes that aren’t your own.”

“My mother always did say you Starks were honorable,” Myrcella said.

“I assume Cersei Lannister did not say it with love in her heart.”

“No.” She surprised herself with the quickness of her response. “If I may be so bold, Your Grace, I say it with more respect.”

His gaze lingered, attempting to figure her out. Myrcella Baratheon would not be her mother’s daughter, though, a woman raised in a inhospitable place, if she was a puzzle easily solved with a glance.

* * *

After some time to wash up from a basin of water— cold against her skin—they let her see her uncle. There were four guards flanking her, and she wondered just how dangerous Uncle Jaime had proven himself to be.

He looked something quite ghastly, truth be told. He was tied to a post, smelling of dirt and shit and piss. His hair was greasy and ratted, his beard fuller than she had ever seen before. When Myrcella was younger, she had been certain her uncle was the perfect embodiment of chivalry. A true, proper knight. He was handsome to be sure, and no one could beat him in combat. Him and her mother looked like something out of a fairytale or one of her songs.

They didn’t sing about this part of war, though. It was just another reminder of all the cruelty in the world she was still getting a hands-on education of. When he looked up, his eyes blinking against the lowering sun, he seemed for a second as if he didn’t trust what he saw.

“Myrcella?” he asked, though his voice was barely more than a croak. How much had he spoken lately? Could she get him some water?

She reached forward, hands clasped onto the wood of the structure holding him. “Let me in,” she ordered, mustering as much strength as she dare.

The closest guard turned to the others, trepidation on his face. “I’m not sure King Robb would like–”

“Shall we go ask him?” She tried to keep her face cool and composed, when in reality she would much rather be soft. Smile kindly, not cause trouble.

Myrcella was fairly sure her mother had a hard time loving her for that very reason. Cersei had never known how to wield kindness as a weapon so she had never found purpose for it as a tool in her arsenal. Sometimes, Myrcella was certain she could see distaste in her mother’s eyes as she would watch her over dinner or the way she would help Tommen repair a broken toy.

There was use for kindness, Myrcella was sure of it, but maybe not here.

“The kingslayer, princess–”

Myrcella turned toward the cage and cleared her throat. “Uncle Jaime, they think if they let me in you'll use me to escape. Can you promise you will not?”

He nodded, wobbly, and Myrcella turned back to the guard. He looked like a true Northman—thick and bearded and burly. When was the last time he had seen a woman, perhaps?

“Sir,” she said, falling softer. It already felt more comfortable to her. “He may be wicked, but he’s my uncle and I am very far from home. If anything were to happen, I promise to march us right back to King Robb and bear the punishment justly owed to me.”

The man’s eyes fell to the delicate curve of her lips, and he nodded finally. When was the last time he had seen any of _his_ family, she wondered.

“We will have to close the door behind you.”

“Certainly,” she said with a sure nod.

Her eyes returned to that of her uncle’s, and when they opened the door she rushed through to him. Her feet were already sinking into the mud.

“Your pretty dress,” he said as she dipped by his side.

She wasted no time in reaching out to his face, feeling the course hair against her delicate flesh. “What do I care of the fabric,” she replied, though now that she did think about it she wasn’t entirely sure how many dresses she had at her disposal. Maybe she should think more of it.

“How did you end up here?” he asked.

“I was on my way to Dorne. I’ve been promised to Prince Trystane, though we’d only been traveling for a few days when a small group of Northern forces scooped me right out of the caravan.”

“That’s quite a climate switch,” he said through something near a smirk. It was playful, and Myrcella released a laugh that was almost a cry.

Myrcella loved her Uncle Tyrion, but she could always tell his eyes held more warmth for Tommen than herself. He was small and odd, and she sometimes considered the possibility that Tyrion had seen something of himself. Her mother kept a safe distance from Myrcella, nearly as if she had felt guilty for birthing her a girl. Her mother’s eyes were all for Joffrey, anyways.

But Myrcella had always held a special place in her heart for her Uncle Jaime, and she was near certain he held it back for her. She loved that he could diffuse the tension, that he could send her a wink over his glass of wine and suddenly she felt as if she was in on a joke. There were times, too, where he’d look at her with softness so dear she felt truly loved—something both her father and mother had failed at.

It had seemed like fate, when she thought it over. Three Lannister children and three Baratheons. One for each of them, but now that same fate had done nothing but betray them. Maybe her and her uncle were too bound to one another.

“Robb Stark won’t hurt you. He’s too good. You have nothing to worry about.”

Myrcella nodded, chewing her bottom lip between her teeth. Her mother would have slapped the top of her hand for that. _An unattractive gesture._

“Mother has done everything to try to get you back.”

It was hard to decipher the look which crossed his face. They were twins, him and mother, and Tyrion had always described their bond as “irreparably close” with a twinkle in his eyes she was only now becoming to understand. She didn’t know how to hold that truth entirely, yet.

“Now she will use those same efforts for you.”

Myrcella nodded. “Next time, maybe I can bring something to help wash you up a bit. You’re really quite disgusting.”

Before he could laugh, the guard was banging against the door. “Time’s up.”

“Be safe,” he whispered back quickly, hurriedly. “Even better, be smart.”

She patted his cheek again, feeling a near unbearable love for this man. For this family. “I will,” she assured him.

When she turned, she did not dare look back.

* * *

Days later, Robb summoned her to his tent early without warning. She did as she was told, slipping quickly into her dress and following the guard. Living so near battle was nothing like she was used to, but Myrcella had already begun to learn her way around the camp.

Yesterday, she had heard one of the soldiers whisper _lady lion_ underneath his breath as she passed, and she couldn’t deny that it had made her stand up straighter. No one had ever considered her much of a lion before—too soft, too pretty—but she found she liked it. As sleep evaded her, she had whispered it to herself over and over. Myrcella, the Lady Lion.

Robb looked tired when she entered the tent and went to sit across from him. His hair was wild, his eyes rimmed in red, and he seemed to barely notice she had arrived until she was right across from him. That weight on his shoulder she had noticed upon first seeing him must have been catching up, because he seemed nearly crushed by it.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked, a simple pleasantry, but it seemed more cruel than she had meant for it. Clearly, he had not.

He did rise in his seat at the question, though, trying to take up more of the space. His father had been a large man, not entirely as large as hers perhaps, but he seemed to fill up a space when he entered a room. Myrcella had assumed Robert Baratheon sort of worked at compensating with his fine clothes and wine. He ordered others around to prove he was king, but he never seemed to truly believe it.

“It can be difficult to sleep with all the plans of battle to be made, but I try,” he said through a grim smile.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said with a small twist of her lips, one her ladies in waiting had called sweet and delicate. _You’re nearly like a fine glass doll,_ Cara would say to her, though it had set Myrcella oddly on edge to think of it now. A fine glass doll only took one drop to shatter, to become sharp.

She did mean it, though. As much as she hated that Robb had ordered for her to be captured, he had only ripped her from being sent to one place she did not wish to go to another. Either way, she was a pawn in the great game of men who did not care a bit what happened to her. Here, so far, Robb had done nothing but treat her with civility.

“I want you to read the letter I am sending to your brother,” Robb said, passing the scroll across the desk to her. “I left space for a line or two if you wish to add something, though I hope you will be truthful.”

What was his truth, she wondered. Did he see himself as the villain in her story? Did he lose sleep over stealing another young girl away from her family?

Most of the letter was nothing but jargon, but the words that stuck out most to her were: _What is done to my sister will be done twice fold to yours. Act Accordingly._

Looking across the desk to Robb, with his weary face and bleary eyes, the sentiment struck no fear in her heart.

Her Uncle Jaime had been right. He was too good to hurt her.

* * *

Myrcella did not meet Catelyn until nearly two weeks into her time at the camp. The only memory Myrcella did have of the woman was when her and her family had first arrived at Winterfell. She had looked rather striking that day—beautiful and strong, though it was clear she had not put more than passing thought into it. Well, that and the way she laughed as Ned Stark whispered something into her ear as they had broken fast. Her parents had never shared moments like that.

Catelyn didn’t ask if she could come in, not that Myrcella was in much of a place to argue. Her skin and hair reminded her instantly of Sansa. Myrcella stood up from her bed and curtsied.

“Lady Stark,” Myrcella spoke. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

She seemed amused at the thought. “Surely you would prefer to see me under different circumstances.”

“That I might be able to amend.”

Catelyn was before her, only a step away. Her eyes trailed Myrcella’s makeshift braid. “I often sent away my daughter’s maid so I could brush out their hair myself. Arya would wiggle out and away at the first chance, so I gave up quickly, but with Sansa she rather liked it. Did your mother ever do that for you?”

Her mother would have declared that below her. That was a job meant for the ladies, not a queen. Before today, Myrcella would have never thought of a mother doing that.

“I cannot say she did.”

Catelyn hummed, and Myrcella couldn’t tell if she was passing judgement on Cersei or not. She seemed deep in thought, of what Myrcella could not begin to fathom. “Would you mind if I brushed out yours?”

Everything in King’s Landing had an ulterior motive. That she had learned from an early age, even if she sometimes struggled to figure out what it might be. Now, across from her, what could Catelyn want? How would this benefit her?

“If you can spare the time,” Myrcella said, and when Catelyn nodded Myrcella went to sit in her chair.

“All I have is time,” she replied. She grabbed the brush and undid the braid before she slowly combed her way through in a way that was something close to tender.

Myrcella found it hard not to lean into the touch. Catelyn was not harsh as if trying to display some sense of strength. All she did was motherly, and it made Myrcella’s chest tighten. Her daughters were gone from her, so were her other children left back at Winterfell.

For the first time she realized she had information that could change everything around her. Arya was not in King’s Landing. Myrcella was trapped here, but that did not make her helpless. She just couldn’t speak too soon until she knew the effect her words would have, what she could do with them.

“They never tell you how dull war can be between the fighting, but I have lived through it before.”

“You must worry terribly,” Myrcella said.

“It is hard not to, and yet when I show my concern it’s a _mother’s worry._ As if it’s merely a feminine trait and not a sensible one.” Catelyn tutted, eyes lost on the shine of Myrcella’s hair. “You are so unbelievably blonde.”

Myrcella smiled. “My ladies would often say I was filled with the sun through and through.”

“You do seem to have the sort of disposition.” Her words were hard to decipher, again, and Myrcella attempted to hear whether it was contempt or not. “All brushed out,” she said, laying a hand on the top of her head before retreating. “May I come visit you again, some night?”

Genuinely, Myrcella nodded. “I would like that very much, Lady Stark.”

* * *

In the brief glimpses she was allowed, Myrcella could tell Robb Stark was weathering. Maybe no one else quite noticed it, maybe he didn’t even himself. Maybe he was worse at putting it up around her, as if her word meant so little she could not spread a rumor. Not that she would, what could possibly be the point?

She knew she should be playing this game better, but when Catelyn came in at night or Myrcella spoke with Robb, it was hard to pretend to be anyone but herself. All her youth she was surrounded by people wearing masks, the dirty truth hiding underneath. It had always struck her as exhausting, so most days she tried to do nothing more than play smartly with what she was.

Today, Robb across from her looked on a last leg. She could not tell you what he had even called her in for, but as a guard rushed in with a scroll and fire in his eyes Myrcella felt herself sitting up straighter. Something was about to happen.

“I have news of Winterfell, Your Grace,” he said, bowing slightly as if in the rush he had forgotten it.

Robb grew larger, trying to regain his image. “Can it not wait?”

The guard looked between the two of them, eyes wide, mouth wider. “It’s been taken, Your Grace.”

Myrcella should not be here to hear this, not from a strategic point of view, but she could tell Robb was too concerned with the words that had fallen over the room like a thick blanket, clogging the air, to care.

“By whom?”

The guard shriveled up, and he stuttered over the next words. “Th- Theon Greyjoy.” He shifted forward and dropped the scroll, bowing once more before escaping out the front of the tent. The thick fabric flapped briefly with the wind, and Myrcella watched with bated breath as his eyes roamed over the words.

“That _bastard,_ ” he said, pushing up from his chair to pace.

Myrcella watched him calmly, trying to remember all she had learned as she spoke with the men of the camp and Uncle Jaime. Theon Greyjoy had been the Starks ward, and Robb had sent him off to get them ships. It seemed in some way along that journey he had decided upon something else.

“Do you think he planned it the whole time?” she asked. Her words were slow, even. It was how she tried to keep up with the games everyone played in the capitol. She wasn’t stupid, but she wouldn’t say she was the quickest. When she tried to figure out why someone may do something, she started slow and gathered the facts, hoping to put together a fuller picture.

Robb seemed to have forgotten she was there, but when he jolted up he looked like a desperate man. In that moment, she figured he didn’t care quite who it was who sat across from him.

“I think he left with the intention of doing what he said,” he began, the words rolling out of him as if he, too, was trying to figure out the intention. “It must have been when he returned home and spoke to his father. My mother _told_ me not to trust a Greyjoy, and here I was being fool enough to think him loyal.”

Myrcella wished they lived in a world where loyalty meant everything. Loyalty and honor and kindness. Whenever she said something of the sort people always told her how _naive_ she was, how childish, but she didn’t think it _was_ to hope for a world that was better. If she sunk to the same level of those fighting in the dirt then she was part of what was making a worse world.

“I’ll have to send men after him to retake Winterfell. What am I if I can’t keep my own _home_ safe. Gods, Bran and Rickon are there.” He fell back into his chair and ran a hand over his beard before letting out a loud groan. Bending forward, he hit his hand into the table and all his papers and quills shook. He looked up to her. “Can I assume you will not spill what you’ve learned in here? Would you do me that kindness?”

 _I am your prisoner in all but name_ , she nearly replied, but what good would that do her. For a moment, she tried to imagine what she would be doing if she had made it to Dorne. Maybe her pale skin would have freckled over in the sun. Maybe she would have fallen in love. Or maybe, she would have missed home so terribly while she adjusted to a spot she found no solace in it was torture.

“If you let me speak freely,” she said, sitting up straighter. What must she look like? A blonde girl with delicate shoulders and more delicate face, trying to look as sturdy as her mother could with a simple glance. Who was she kidding? “Your grace,” she added.

His face was unreadable, and she could tell he probably wanted nothing more than to have her leave and let out his anger in full. Instead, she dared not remove her gaze. He nodded.

“Theon Greyjoy was your father’s ward, yes?” she asked. He nodded again. “Do you remember what you said to me the first day I arrived at camp?”

His brow furrowed, and she waited. Eventually he answered. “I do not.”

She bent forward, her elbows on the arms of her chair, and leveled her gaze. “I hope you can think of yourself as more of a ward than a prisoner, you said. Do you think, after returning home after so long, he may have felt more like a prisoner than he originally thought? He may have saw what was taken from him?”

“My father was _nothing_ but kind to him,” he said, venom in his voice. This was the angriest Myrcella had ever witnessed the great wolf, and she could imagine him on the battlefield just like this. There was an energy in him that seemed to spark outwards, that might zap you if you touched it. “He was part of this family, he was my _brother_.”

His voice cracked a little on the last word, and Myrcella wanted to reach out. There was a great sadness sitting right alongside all that anger. She took a deep breath, instead, and tried to get to her point.

“My intention is not to say he is right,” Myrcella said. “What he did was ill-thought out, it was betrayal of the highest order.”

“What is your point, then?” he asked, his voice still a growl. He seemed to be growing more tired with every exchange of words, though.

“My mother always said to know what someone will do, you have to know what they want,” Myrcella said. “Neither can you control someone until you do. It seems to me Theon is trying to prove himself—he wants to be seen as powerful. By his men, no doubt, who probably think him a false Iron Islander. To you, for doubting he could do anything of import because he was not a true Northman.” Robb looked about to interject, and she waved her hand lightly to halt his words. “I don’t intend to insult. I am sure you never tried to make him feel that way, but sometimes we can’t help how people feel.”

“He ravaged the place he was raised, _my_ home,” Robb said. “What will me understanding why he did it help?”

“Because the war has only just begun and you cannot fight all of them all at once, you will become too divided.” She took a deep breath, thinking about the map of Westeros her tutor had tried to instill in her. It did not matter much whether she could remember all the mottos, all the sigils, as much as it did for her brothers, but Myrcella liked geography all the same.

She liked trailing her finger over the old map and thinking about what it would be like to be free to go to all these places. What would it be like to cross the Narrow Sea and feel that sun freely across her face? What did the world look like from on top of that great Northern Wall? Instead, she stayed in the big castle and knew so very little about the world outside of it.

“I don’t understand battle like you, quite obviously,” she said. “I do know though to win a war you need men, and if you send men off to reclaim Winterfell and fight the Greyjoys, you lose all the men on both sides of the altercation.”

“Do you want me to leave my home captured by traitors?” he asked, raising a brow.

“I would have you offer him an opportunity to make up for his betrayal,” Myrcella said. “Think of it. If all he wants is to prove himself to his men, to you, to every person who has ever called him scum, then you simply need to offer him an alternative to. Appeal to him. If he does this task for you he will be forgiven, and he will earn himself the glory he so sorely desires. Ask him to go get Sansa.”

Robb’s brows rose, and she could tell this strange and highly unorthodox plot had surprised him as much as it had her. Did he think her crazy? She was starting to think she might be.

“I know it is quite extreme, but look at the possibilities. It would get him out of Winterfell, and even if it is impossible for him to actually get Sansa at least he will not be causing _you_ trouble. If he somehow manages to break into King’s Landing and steal her away, it will do nothing but free her and give him that glory he seeks.”

She let out a long breath, finally feeling as if she was given a chance to get it all out. What really had she been thinking, though? It was not her place to give counsel to the _King of the North_ , and certainly not something as wild as this. Where had it come from? Maybe she was still nothing more than a child thinking on knights and songs, because the idea of a traitorous rogue going to steal a princess away from the capitol sounded something like a story her septa might have shared with her after a glass or two of wine.

It was for Sansa, really. The two of them had never been that close while in King’s Landing, but now, after being stolen away by her brother and having her mother brush out her hair every night, Myrcella felt a fondness for Sansa she found it hard to describe. Robb and Catelyn thought of Sansa, but they had a million other tasks at hand. They were fighting a war, so if Myrcella could keep her close in _her_ thoughts, maybe then she could hope someone else was doing the same for her.

“That is… entirely unlikely,” Robb said. “You do know that?”

She nodded. “I know.” Myrcella worked her bottom lip between her teeth before realizing it might diminish her power. The last thing she wanted was to seem weak after spilling a crazy scheme. “Your sister waits, Your Grace. She waits in that castle while my mother belittles her and Joffrey does worse. She waits for you to come save her.”

“You told me she was okay,” he said slowly.

“I said she was _alive_.”

The two shared a look so charged Myrcella nearly felt uncomfortable to be part of it. There was something intimate about it she didn’t quite know how to describe. In reality, she had spent so little time with men besides for dances while at court. She had certainly never revealed herself openly like she did now, her wild thoughts and all.

This man was supposed to be her enemy, though she had never thought of him quite like that. He had stolen her while she was on the road. He was in open rebellion against her family, and yet she found it so difficult to see him that way. When she looked at him, all she really saw was a man fighting for his family. She wondered if anyone back in the capitol fought for her like that.

“What is the worst that can happen from proposing it?” she asked. “He already devastated Winterfell. If he says no then you move forward with sending men up there like you already had intentions of doing. If not, maybe you get your sister back. Maybe you don’t lose more of your family.”

“My mother once told me I’m too honest to be good at playing games,” he said. “Perhaps that must be why I struggle to see yours. You are a prisoner here.”

She felt the corner of her mouth quirk up. “I thought we were using the word guest.”

He smiled back—small and tired and barely there—but a smile all the same. “Guest. Yes, you are.”

“You played the game when you stole me,” she said.

His eyes were still so intense, and Myrcella felt warm.

“I am sorry about that,” he said. “When I did it I failed to think about the young woman I would be taking and the life I was taking her from. I have to admit it was done as nothing more than a war tactic. A princess for a princess.”

“There are worse places I could be,” she said. “Though, Dorne would prove much warmer.”

He laughed quietly, and she could see the moment the world caught back up to him. His body fell underneath the weight again, and she felt the familiar pull to comfort him. He was too honest to play games, and maybe she was too full of heart to do it. She failed to see the enemy in front of her, blinded by his humanity. What a pair they made.

“I have to speak to my counsel and decide our next move. I can trust you will find your way back to your tent?”

“I have managed it for weeks now,” she said with a small nod. She was about to move when she paused, and she turned her gaze back on him one last time. “If I may be so bold, do you think you might tell me what you decide?”

She could see the indecision on his face, and also… maybe amusement? “Perhaps,” he answered, and he brought a hand up to scratch at his jaw. “Princess Myrcella… I’d prefer if you kept being so bold with me. I rather like it.”

She curtsied then, feeling a strange blush play at her features, and left him to his decisions.

* * *

For a day, Myrcella heard nothing. She stayed in her tent, knowing nothing of the world beyond it. Then, Catelyn found her the next night. Myrcella was used to the routine by now. She sat in her chair, hair already out of whatever braid it had been wrangled into for the day, and waited. Most nights, Catelyn did not speak of much, and Myrcella was left trying to decipher what she was playing at.

Could it merely be a mother’s kindness? Was she missing her girls? Myrcella thought of the conversation from yesterday, and she realized she had still yet to tell anyone here Arya was missing. Robb had not questioned it when she mentioned Theon rescuing Sansa, _only Sansa,_ but had he thought it over? Why there was an intentional loss of words?

“I heard you spoke with my son,” she said three brushes in. Her eyes were downcast, as they often were when she brushed out the hair. Sometimes, Myrcella thought she had to keep her eyes on the blonde so as to not get lost in the movements. How cruel would it be to feel the rhythm of the brushes and look down to remember it was not your own daughter beneath your hand. “He failed to mention exactly where this plot came from to the men on his counsel, but him and I did speak on it.”

“I fear it might have been far-fetched,” she said.

“It was creative, to be sure,” she replied. “Men often lack that skill.”

Myrcella felt her stomach tighten as she thought about Lady Catelyn thinking over her daughters, her sons who were still under Theon’s cruel hostage takeover in their own home. She hated every second of this. She hated that she was a puzzle piece, too, not merely a person. Never had she asked to be part of this war, this rebellion, these games.

This all was because her father might not be her father, the man in the cage might own the title. Her uncle, who she loved and admired. It made her stomach tighten further to think of all the lies she had been fed and how she still failed to know the extent of them. Her life was not her own.

She closed her eyes and felt the brushes Catelyn did above her. If she used that creativity Catelyn had just commended, she might be able to pretend she was back in the castle. Tommen could burst in any minute to ask if she would play with Ser Pounce and him, and they would go on a a great adventure.

“Lady Catelyn, I have to tell you something,” Myrcella said as she opened her eyes. Her throat felt dry. Was this a mistake? It felt like she was walking on eggshells, or as if she was that delicate doll the ladies often compared her to. She was seconds from cracking into glass if she stepped incorrectly.

The brushing stopped, and Myrcella turned to see Catelyn step in front of her. She was better at hiding her exhaustion than Robb, but Myrcella had a feeling that was part of being a woman in this world. They were always putting on a tough exterior, trying to look beautiful just so they still had some worth by the men who surrounded them.

This moment might be exactly why Catelyn had come in all those nights ago and started brushing her hair. Cersei would have called her simple for thinking she could trust the enemy, but Myrcella didn’t see her as her foe. She saw her as a good woman, a good _mother._ Maybe she really was too kind-hearted for the world she had fallen into.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Arya isn’t in King’s Landing,” she said, and as she released the words she felt some weight fall off of her. There was something else, though, seeping into her that made it feel as if there was no going back from this moment. There was no physical duress here, nothing pushing her over the edge. Maybe she really was a traitor to her family.

Catelyn’s face contorted, and Myrcella tried to read all the emotions that flickered across her features. There was anger and sadness and confusion. There was worry. “Where is she?” she asked. Her voice was tight enough Myrcella thought it could cut.

“Since your husband was executed she’s been missing. I’m not privy to how they’ve been searching for her, but I know she isn’t in King’s Landing.”

“That changes a lot,” Catelyn said. Her eyes were diverted, and Myrcella could see the way she was processing all of the information.

“I thought you should know, so if Theon goes he knows properly what he is doing. I was tired of keeping this truth from you who did not deserve it,” she said. Yesterday she had felt as if she was walking on a long rope, seconds from falling to either side as she spoke with Robb about the possibility of Theon. Now, she felt like the rope had gotten thinner and longer and the walk might never end.

“Why do you want to save her so badly?” Catelyn asked.

It was the first time they had addressed that big, unavoidable thing that sat in the room with them always. They never addressed that Myrcella was stolen, and they never touched that Sansa was captive. Catelyn and her avoided those subjects like dancing around a great ballroom, trying to only step on the good squares.

“Do you not feel as if you’re betraying your kin?” she continued. It wasn’t an accusation, though it may have been said with some anger.

“The ladies in the castle whisper,” Myrcella said, trying to gain her voice. Her whole life she had tried to gain her voice, learn how to wield it so people listened. The whole time, people always telling her she didn’t need one because her face was pretty and her hands skillful at the tasks meant for her. “They like to gossip, and many times they think I can’t hear them. Possibly, they simply don’t care that I can. _The new king is a bastard,_ they say as if he isn’t my brother, horrible or not. _Cersei Lannister is a snake,_ they hiss. _Sansa Stark is a broken bird,_ I heard one say. _I heard the king ordered a man to beat her face because the North usurper won a battle.”_

Catelyn’s jaw was tight, and Myrcella watched her eyes grow more open. As horrible as these words may be, she could sense that the mother was soaking them in. This was the truth without any pretense. This was the closest she had gotten to what was happening in that castle how many miles away.

She was just a woman searching for the truth, Myrcella thought. And finally I’ve given it to her.

“Truth be told,” she continued, “I don’t feel much fear here even if I am surrounded by men that hate my family and are closer to battle than I have ever dreamed of being. Before your son stole me away, I was being sent to another man I did not know or decide on. It made little difference to me, though now I am faced with the burden of knowing the enemies.”

“What have you decided?” Catelyn asked.

Myrcella could feel herself choking up, but she pushed her shoulders back and did not let her chin dip. She could cry later, thinking about all the ways her life has shifted and the ways she has helped it do so.

“They do not look much like enemies at all,” she said finally. “They look like a mother still seeming to care for a girl who is from a family who destroyed her own. They look like a brother with an impossible choice.”

“You are beautiful and young,” Catelyn said.

Myrcella nodded. “You can call me what you really try to say: naive. I am, perhaps. I believe there is good in the world, and it should be rewarded. Your daughter did nothing to deserve what she was given, and she had had to suffer under the hands of my horrendous brother. Joffrey is not a good man, and he is certainly not a good king. Your son is.”

“He is playing at it.”

“True,” Myrcella said, “but he is playing at it for the people and for his family. There are worse ways to play it. I don’t want to betray my family, but I also no longer want to sit amongst the side and watch as if it is a tourney where men compete for fun. I have done it for a long time, and all it did was get me kidnapped by a traitor.”

“You were a child,” Catelyn said, and Myrcella tried to read the true meaning behind those words. _You shouldn’t have had to worry about participating,_ maybe. Or perhaps _what have we done to you all._ Parents handing grudges and wars to their children who hand it onto theirs, the wheel circling over and over again. There was no escape from the conflict. “I have to go speak with my son, this is important.” She paused, sighing, and looked as if she was going to reach out for her until her arm stayed stuck to her side. “Thank you.”

Myrcella nodded, and Catelyn was out of the tent before she could have spoken any words back. Not that she had any idea what she would possibly say, anyways. She turned to look at herself in her small hand mirror, noticing her long blonde hair still half-brushed out. After a beat, she exited out of her tent to the darkness around her and made her way through the tents until she found Jaime’s cage.

“I can’t let you in,” the guard said, but he was familiar with her.

“Please, sir. Robb said I could, you can close the door behind me as you always do.”

He looked unsure, but she sent him docile eyes that weren’t difficult to put on. She felt so vulnerable after all the news. After a beat, he let her in and closed the door behind her.

“It is rather late, sweetling,” Jaime said.

The tenderness in his words as he sat there dirty and malnourished brought tears to her eyes. Thank the gods it was dark enough he couldn’t see them, though he did seem rather concerned as she drew closer. Without wasting a second, she sat down beside him in the dirt and muck.

“Your dress…” he said, eyes trailing the fabric. Always so concerned about her clothes as if they mattered to her.

“Just fabric and seams and a woman’s wasted time,” she spat, watching the men walk around the cage and through the tents. What did they fight for, really?

All this time she had watched Robb and Catelyn deciding how tired they looked, and here she was exhausted. Her bones felt heavy within her. She rested her head on his shoulder as if they were not in an enemy camp, and she wasn’t probably sitting in his own shit. The thought made her laugh, but it died horribly in her throat.

“I may have betrayed our family,” she whispered. She could feel the weight of his head on top of her own. He couldn’t even reach out to hug her, but he did try to give her that comfort.

“Did you do it with good intentions?” he asked.

What did good intentions ever matter to him? He may have been a knight, but his moral code was flexible. His family before the good of the realm, and she supposed that was honorable too in a different way. Her uncle loved her, but he was selfish, too.

“I did,” she said, though she doubted it. Was she any better than all those men who made plans to get what they wanted? She wanted Sansa to be free so she did not have to hurt anymore, so maybe she was as bad as them all trying to get her way. All she felt like doing was crying, but what was possibly the point in front of a man who could not hold her. It would just make him feel more helpless, and she needed him to stay strong until she could get him out and home. “Are you my father?”

He tensed below her cheek. Despite her attempts not to cry a few had leaked out, and she felt the salty tears mix with the dirt of his rags. When she stepped back into the firelight to make her way back to her tent, she would look something ridiculous. But what did she care? The delicate doll wouldn’t crack from a few people calling her dirty. They had been saying it about her blood for years.

“Yes,” he said, voice half giving out underneath the weight of the admission.

“I think a part of me has always known,” she began, thinking about all those times her eyes strayed to the darkness of Robert Baratheon and seeing nothing of herself within him. “I have always been quite thankful for your love.”

“You don’t hate me?” he asked. “You aren’t disgusted by the thought of it?”

Myrcella crawled to her knees so she could see her father’s face as he spoke. It would be the first time she had seen it fully, knowing it to be what it was. His eyes seemed scared to meet hers.

“You love my mother?” she asked. He nodded. “I never thought I was bred from love. I suppose it is quite a rare and beautiful thing to know I have been.”

He closed his eyes, and she could tell he was seconds away from crying, too. Out of all the ways he had thought about telling her someday the truth of their relationship, this was probably so far from any of his imaginings. It was honest, though, and Myrcella was tired of deception.

“You are too good for this world,” he said. “Truly a ray of sunshine.”

“I’ve been told that before.” All as insults. _Sweet. Naive. Docile._ They shouldn’t be cruel words, and yet they were so often passed around with sneers.

“Don’t forget,” he whispered, dipping forward, “the sun can burn.”

“Be safe, father,” she said, reaching out and dropping a kiss on his cheek. “Please refrain from doing anything stupid while I try to figure a way out of here for you.”

He nodded. “I can promise that.”

* * *

Back in her tent, Myrcella brought the hand mirror up to spot bits of her reflection. It was truly trying to put together a puzzle, because she could only see small glimpses of herself. Her dirty ankle. A tear-stained cheek. The mud covered her, and there was something entirely freeing about it.

A maid came in, ducking her head upon seeing her. “Princess, King Robb has sent me. You are to have a bath.” She looked up from her tilted head, flashing her the smallest of smiles. “It does seem to have come at the right time.”

“It has,” she said, thinking about how beautiful it would be to scrub her skin raw. “Has he said why I’ve awarded myself one now? How he can spare the luxury?”

“He told me to tell you he’s done more than consider your words.”

Myrcella brought the hand mirror up toward her face, looking at the tired lines and the dirt streaked. Maybe, she was more of the lady lion than she had thought. 


	2. robb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the war effort continues, Robb is hit with many difficulties. He sometimes wishes Princess Myrcella wasn't so keen to point them out to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are we surprised I've updated so soon? cause honestly i am. we're in robb's head now, and i hope you guys like the point of view shift. if you don't, feel free not to tell me that. 
> 
> enjoy!!!

Some days, Robb found himself sitting at his desk in his tent, eyes trailing over the scrolls and notes and battle plans, and he couldn’t help but think back on Winterfell. It felt dangerous, a painful sort of solace, to think on the place he left behind. The place now captured by Theon. He shouldn’t because it did nothing but hold him down, but there were moments he thought the pain was a sort of fire underneath him. 

There was no going back, though, only forward. It did no one any good to think what their life would be if father had never been called to the capitol, trudging his two daughters along with him. Sansa, trapped. Arya, missing. What a mess they had made of it all. No, Robb could not get lost in his memories of Winterfell and his happy childhood. 

Those memories only serviced to trap him, try to remind him how much it had changed. There would be a happier future to look forward to, if he could manage it, and that was his job too. He was the big brother, after all, and with his father gone… King of the North had never been a title he had anticipated wearing, but he would. He could. 

The scroll on his desk had arrived an hour ago, and still he couldn’t seem to get himself to open it. He was afraid, quite honestly, that he would open it and the world would change again. At times, it felt almost as if every day his life was a great sphere he could only barely get purchase on top of and just when he thought he had found his balance it began rolling again. He needed a second to breathe. 

Finally, after cracking his knuckles and running a tired hand down a more tired face, Robb grabbed it and broke the seal. 

_ Robb,  _

_ I will get the princess of the North. Then after I succeed and return, you and I will discuss relations between the Iron Islands and the North. Best wishes on the battlefield.  _

_   Theon Greyjoy                                                _

Robb crushed the letter within his palm. He would have ripped it, burned it, but he needed the words to show his mother and counsel. After a moment, he opened up the frayed parchment to look at those words again.  _ Best wishes on the battlefield.  _ They sat unwell in his stomach. What could Theon possibly mean by that? As if he hadn’t betrayed Robb in every way a man could betray another.

Still, through his anger and desperation, Robb couldn’t help but still feel something for this traitor he had once considered a brother. The terrible truth, was that he couldn’t seem to stop caring for him still, slightly, despite his wrongs. Maybe that was what family was, in the end. The people you couldn’t seem to escape affecting you, touching you, even when they’ve done everything in their power to break that bond. 

He would not think on him any longer. Robb couldn’t bear it. Until Theon brought Sansa back to him unharmed, Robb would not think on the man who had broken his heart. That was the worst part of war, he had found—how it kept breaking his heart in two, over and over, and he was meant to keep fighting for it. 

The world would have him dead. The world would have all of them dead—the Starks—if it had its wicked way. He couldn’t let it. He wouldn’t. 

* * *

The days moved quickly, often. There were so many things to plan, things to worry about, and Robb could find himself going long stretches of time before he would think back on the girl he had stolen. He hated thinking about it like that, but maybe that was merely the reality of war. Girls got stolen, fathers died, and the world kept rolling forward with barely enough time to gain a hold on all of it.

“Princess Myrcella is here to see you for dinner,” one of the men told him, and Robb beckoned for him to let her in. 

She appeared with strong composure. Her hair was braided back into something more intricate then he usually saw, something he never would have noticed if Sansa hadn’t spent most of her youth hopping up next to him at the table in the mornings to show him all her braids. 

_ Isn’t this one particularly pretty, Robb,  _ she would say with the docile sound of her youthful voice. Her eyes were always sparkling in those days.  _ A proper lady.  _

Then, he would push her away. On days where he had more patience and the desire to be a proper brother, he would grab her near him and listen to the long rambling stories of an imaginative little girl. That was before she started trying to impress their mother so much, and she started sticking so strictly to the rules of decorum. 

Maybe if he hadn’t let it happen so easily, if he had fought a bit harder for those moments with a spirited Sansa, she would have been more prepared for the world that was to come. She wouldn’t have walked straight into the lion’s den because it was her duty. 

Though, Arya had seemed to hold enough spirit for the both of them, and she was no safer then their sister. Maybe all Starks were cursed in their own way, Robb thought. 

Myrcella, though, was in front of him, and she curtsied. Her eyes were keen, as if she could tell exactly where his thoughts had been. Had she ever anticipated walking straight into the wolves? There were times when Robb stared at her and tried to decipher who she was. Was she really so kind, so demure? Was she playing him for the fool? It was hard to remember she was younger than him with the way her quick wit could fool him. 

“It’s a pleasure to see you this evening, your grace,” she said. “I thank you for the invitation. Dinner can become quite lonely.” 

“It keeps me from staring at battle plans all eve,” he said before he motioned to the small table set up. “Please, let’s sit.” 

She moved gracefully around his tent to the other side, and she sat soundlessly. When she looked back up at him, she eyed his chair with a raised brow. He sat. Believe it or not, Robb lacked experience with capturing princesses promised to others and stealing them away, but he often thought Myrcella shouldn’t be as gracious to him as she was. 

Though, it wasn’t hard to imagine why. When he thought of Sansa and the company which kept her, there was no space to be anything but. He cleared his throat, trying to clear those thoughts as well. Keep looking forward, he reminded himself. To look back will do nothing but drag him down. 

“I have not seen you for some time,” Myrcella said after a sip of water. “Has the war effort kept you occupied?”

“More than I would like,” he said with a nod. 

“Yet, you keep fighting,” she said. 

He tried to read her words, but it was hard. She was capable of saying them with such propriety.  _ I just want to go home _ , he wanted to say.  _ I just want my family back _ . But he kept them in, because as charming as he found Myrcella Baratheon to be, she was the enemy. If he showed weakness for even a second, he was terrified to see what might crawl into all those cracks he revealed on his person. 

“Honor demands it,” he said, weighing the words in his head. “I speak on war all day, though, maybe we should move the conversation elsewhere.” 

She nodded. “The weather hasn’t improved much.” 

“Oh Gods, are we discussing the weather now?” he asked through a laugh. “How dry must we be.” 

She smiled prettily, and he was certain it was a real one. It felt too genuine not to be, and he liked knowing that he was not a horrible person to spend time with despite being her captor. It was silly how much he still wanted her to like him despite the situation. 

“What would you like me to discuss?” she asked. “I do nothing all day. I am permitted to walk the camps, sometimes I converse with my uncle. There is nothing to read and not surplus supplies enough to sew. Oft, the highlight of my days are your mother.” 

He knew his mother visited her from time to time, but he had never thought to question those visits and what happened between the two of them. He was glad if they found some comfort between them—a mother without a daughter, a daughter without a mother. Two halves that weren’t the right whole, but a whole in their own right. 

“What do you and my mother discuss?” he asked. 

She paused then as she leaned back, seeming to eye him down the line of her nose. “Is that what this dinner is, Your Grace? An interrogation? Are you trying to steal information from me?” 

The idea hadn’t occurred to him, and he felt as if he had betrayed her trust, somehow. This whole situation had already grown too complicated for him. His mother truly was right when she said he was too honest for games. He wanted a simpler life than this. 

“I worry about her,” he said, sticking with the truth. The truth was consistently the easiest for him, and he had never felt awkward revealing that. There was no embarrassment in being authentic, but now he was expected to be duplicitous so often. “I only ask because I hope you can offer her something I fail to.” 

She bent closer to him again, and it was then that the food was brought to them. Her eyes looked over the fare and back up at him. “A bit better than what I am usually served.” 

“It’s still war-time food,” he said apologetically. 

“Your mother is good,” she said after a bite. “Many nights we don’t talk, or if we do it’s of nothing of import. Memories from all of your childhoods or what growing up in King’s Landing was like for myself. Some nights, she simply needs the truth.” 

Desperately, he wanted to ask her what the truth might be. What was the truth to Myrcella? While he felt comfortable trying to give away as much honesty as he could dare, he found it intrusive to ask it of her when she had already spoken more than she might have anticipated. 

“Thank you,” he said before looking down at his food. They sat in silence for some time, only the sounds of their scraping silverware dotting the moment with breaks from the quiet. 

“Would you…” she trailed off, clearly deciding between looking up at him and down at her plate. Finally, her eyes made her way up and she looked straight into him. “Would you tell me about Winterfell? About your home?” 

“You’ve been there, princess,” he said. She nodded but did not back down from the question. “Why?” 

There was a moment he was certain she was going to give up the whole discussion, but then she squared her shoulders and furrowed her brow in thought. After a second, she met his gaze again. 

“When we came to visit you, it felt like it took ages to reach the castle. My father loved your father, deeply, and he wouldn’t stop talking about all the stories of their battles and shared youth. My mother would roll her eyes, taking long sips of her wine. When we arrived, it looked different than I thought it might. The stories had gone to my head, made me think it was going to be something spectacular, and it was in a way but not  _ majestic.  _ It was silly, really…

“The energy, though. There was this… simply put a happiness within your family. Your youngest sister Arya, she was so wild, but when she acted out you were all laughing and smiling. You were a  _ family _ , a proper one. I love my younger brother Tommen, he is kindhearted and good, but Joffrey he’s a—”

_ Monster _ , he thought.  _ She wants to say monster but will not dare it in front of me for fear I’ll be dropped into thoughts of Sansa.  _

“Well,” Myrcella said as she cleared her throat, “I have love for my family, I do, but it’s not… I felt as if there was something different about what went on in those big, brick walls that must have bred all of that. I found it sort of unfathomable, if I’m being honest. I don’t want to make you talk about something painful, but for a girl trapped in a camp with—”

“I can talk about it,” he told her, nodding solidly. It wasn’t as if he could offer her much else, but this he could manage. “I am just not at all certain where to start.” 

She smiled again, and once again he could sense that it was genuine. It made him feel quite worthy of something great, truth be told. 

“Please,” she said. “Just tell me something good. Something happy.” 

So he did. 

* * *

“I think we should release Jaime Lannister,” his mother said across the table from him.

His eyes looked up from the plans laid out over the table left from the counsel meeting, and he watched the way she toyed with the things which dottled the table in front of her. It seemed almost a nervous tick, but he had never known his mother to show the least bit of anxiety. Upon sensing his gaze, she met it. 

There was something strange still about seeing his mother amongst the dirt and battle that took their lives over, these days. A part of him wished she had never come, so he could hold onto all the memories of her as purely his mother. It was selfish, but so was the part of him that needed her by her side. It reminded him that not all was lost. 

“He is one of our only bargaining chips,” he said, “and with Myrcella still in cour camp they will never release Sansa until they have her back.” 

“I don’t expect they will,” she said, “but hopefully we don’t need them to. We should ask for a trade—Arya for Jaime.” 

“They don’t have Arya.” 

“They don’t, but they don’t know we know that. It would be stupid for them not to agree to that as a deal. We send Jaime with Brienne, they can go covertly, and we use it to attempt some sort of understanding. They will think we are growing more desperate instead of realizing we have never been stronger.” 

“What do we do when we get nothing in return?” he asked, thinking about the bargaining chip he had left to sit in his own filth for months on end. He had been nothing but a bother to him, but he was still useful. 

For a second, he thought about how much more alone Myrcella would feel with her uncle gone from her. Her uncle who might very well be her father. That was what had started this whole war after all.

“My men will think me stupid for letting him go,” he said. “We will have given him for nothing.”

“There’s a chance they will have to overcompensate and give us Sansa,” his mother said, though it was clear she didn’t think the thought all that likely. “They might just take him back and offer nothing in return. They will get firsthand knowledge, however, that you have been treating their daughter with nothing but respect. And…”

“And?” he prompted after she had stumbled into quiet. 

“And Brienne will be with him. She can attempt to find Sansa and get her to safety. Is it not better to have two rescue missions in place than a singular one? She might be able to find out more information about Arya while she is at it.” 

“Lady Brienne is strong, true, but she isn’t exactly  _ stealthy _ ,” Robb said. 

Catelyn’s red hair seemed to glisten in the candlelight, and it fluttered around her fallen from her braid as she looked back at him. She had much fire in moments like this. She looked quite inarguably Tully, and yet in moments Robb thought of her exactly as the wolf. 

“Do you not want your sisters back?” Catelyn asked, her voice rising. “We fight and we fight and we get no closer. Our home is barely being held, and my daughters, your  _ sisters _ …”

He stepped forward, feeling that familiar fire flicker at his sides at well. “Of  _ course  _ I want them back, but I can’t exactly storm the gates of King’s Landing. Do you not think every day I think about leaving this place and hunting down my sisters? What is this all for if we can’t be safe and happy at the end of it.” 

The tension in the air diminished as Catelyn took a deep breath, seeming to center herself. “You should hear some of the things that girl says when she doesn’t even realize it, letting them slip out like nothing…” 

His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” 

“Some nights, she will reveal bits of her childhood as if she’s simply telling a relatable memory, but there will be… something darkening it. A mention of Joffrey’s cruelty, or perhaps a word of advice her mother once gave her. Robert was entirely absent, though that doesn’t come as much of a surprise unfortunately. I am more surprised at how that girl is so kind without seemingly any example of it.” 

“You worry about the cage Sansa is still in?” Robb asked. 

Catelyn nodded. “Myrcella was safe from the darkness because Cersei loves her children, even when she might not be entirely orthodox in the way she shows it, but Sansa has none of that protection. I am worried about the woman we will get returned to us.” 

Robb stepped around the table until he was in front of his mother. It was impossible to think of his little sister as a growing woman, as anything but the child he saw ride away. He wasted no time in reaching out and grabbing onto her, and she grabbed him in return. “We will get them back,” he said, because he had to hold onto that if he had any hope for continuing to move forward. “We will be happy again.” 

* * *

Some of his favorite moments of the day were when Robb could walk through his camp and see his men. Even when they were surly or off-putting, he liked to move through them and talk to them like they were friends. If they were willing to lay down their lives for his and his family, they should be treated like such.

His father had always instilled the importance of making your men feel important. You must walk amongst them, be one of them, let them know you care about their name and their families. Otherwise, the battle would be already lost. 

He’d by lying, however, if he didn’t say he found more joy in these walks since he had first encountered Talisa on the battlefield. Not as frequent as he would like, he had found it something to look forward to when he came across her. It was easy, nice, to pretend to not be the young wolf or the King of the North. It was relaxing to get to pretend for a few moments that he was someone who could talk to a pretty girl without an engagement on his back he did not want. 

“Lady Talisa,” he greeted, feeling a creep of a smile taking over his face. She was casual in her beauty, and it was striking every time he saw it. Today, in the sunny daylight especially. 

“Your grace. I’m not sure I’m a lady. Westerosi customs are still a bit foreign to me,” she said. She sparred back with him as if he was still just a young man who she could capture, as if this was a dance and he could ask for a song. 

In those small interactions, he could feel himself breathe. Truly, deeply breathe before that burden of the world came crashing back down on him. Was it selfish? Was he using her for his own gain? He had never thought about it beyond liking her presence and wanting to continue being in it. 

He ignored the rolling thoughts and looked at her clear eyes, instead. The open expression of her face. “It’s hard to keep all the rules straight, but if I remember my lessons. A lady of royal birth is always called a lady. Unless she’s a queen or a princess. I could find someone who knows.”

“I’m sure the princess would know. She is well-learned and seems as if she might have placed more import on her lessons than yourself,” she said with a raise of her brow. “I truly don’t know why you are so insistent I’m of royal birth.” 

“Because it’s obvious,” he said, and she had opened her mouth up to continue this game just as the aforementioned princess appeared seemingly from thin air and made her way over. 

There was something in Myrcella’s eyes—almost  _ angry _ , determined certainly—that created a seed of worry low in his stomach. In the sun, her blonde hair truly sparkled around her. She would look something like an angel with a halo if her eyes looked anything but holy in that moment. 

“Princess Myrcella,” Talisa spoke, dipping slightly. “Your hair looks lovely today.” 

Myrcella softened at the compliment, sending a gentle smile in Talisa’s direction. “Thank you, Lady Talisa. I have a lot of time to practice on braids these days.” She turned back to Robb, and it appeared as if a curtain of anger rushed back over her eyes at his presence. “Your Grace, I do hate to bother the two of you, but if I may steal you away? I have something of import to discuss.” 

He nodded, turning back to Talisa briefly. “We will have to finish this discussion another time. Don’t think I did not notice that the Princess also called you Lady.”

Myrcella’s brows scrunched together. “Why would I not? She is of royal birth.”

Robb felt a victorious, almost childish, grin take over her face. Talisa rolled her eyes, please and satisfied as she nodded in goodbye. 

The tension fell over them instantly as she took his arm, walking them away from the other woman. “I thought you were promised to another,” Myrcella said as soon as they were out of earshot, her voice taut. “It was for a very advantageous bridge if I do recall.” 

“I am,” he said, feeling his own voice grow closed. As they walked some men said hello to him, and there were a few who sent Myrcella smiles too. If a Lannister could come into their camp and manage to get Northmen on their side, Robb thought they might be able to get just about anyone to like them. “What point do you aim to make exactly?” 

They were on the borders of camp now, near the trees though there were still many men walking around them. Myrcella turned and faced him head on, and he could see she was angrier now that they were further away from everyone. Her jaw was clasped tightly, and her fists clenched at her sides. It was an inappropriate thought, but the idea that  _ he  _ could be the one to raise such anger in her nearly made him proud. How could he possibly have such power? 

“You are promised to another, and you speak to her like you are not. You can’t love her, Robb.” The words spilled from her quickly, and he could see the second she realized her error. It took over her face in a way he could swear he saw every muscle twitch, every small change in inflection, like a wave crashing against the shore. “Your Grace,” she corrected. 

His mind was too focused on her previous words to care much about the slight, or to possibly think about what it meant for their connection. A connection that was not even meant to happen, that every moment in the world had seemed to stop from happening until he had intervened and forced it into existence. A princess for a princess, Gods how stupid had he been. 

“I don’t love her,” he said. “I’m getting to know her. It’s important to know your people.” 

“Oh,” she said, tilting her head, “I hadn’t realized she was Northern bred. She had never mentioned that when we spoke.” 

“You two speak?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm. 

Myrcella looked seconds from rolling her eyes, but she kept her face straight instead. “I believe you and I have discussed how very limited my options are on the daily, and she does make quite a few appearances as of late. Her and I have conversed on occasion. She is a smart and dedicated woman. I would not be surprised you caught certain affections.” 

As annoying as it seemed to him in this moment to think it, Myrcella wore her anger beautifully. It seemed to sharpen her like a fine blade, and all her features followed suit. The wind seemed to move around her differently, as if working in her favor. Even the elements couldn’t help but be fond of her. 

“Why does this bother you so?” Robb asked. “Speak true.” 

He hadn’t expected those words to make her angrier, and yet it somehow sparked something within her further. Her eyes grew larger, and he watched as she quite literally tutted underneath her breath. 

“I hadn’t been aware I’d been speaking to you falsely all this time,” she said with words cut like glass. “Do you think that's what I do? Play you like a game because I’m bored and trying to get my way?” 

“I did not say that,” he said with a groan. Speaking with her was like walking through a forest where there might be a trap underneath the fallen leaves at any turn. He looked up and caught the eye of a few soldiers nearby pretending they weren’t eyeing the exchange. Without sparing another second, he grasped onto her upper arm and lead her further into the trees and out of eyeshot. 

“Oh, do I make a scene, Your Grace?” she asked. “I’d hate to be the cause of drama. Though, you speaking to someone who is not your betrothed with flirtation might have already been doing that.” 

“If I had known this was what bold meant when I told you to be so with me,” he began, “I might have refrained.” He reached up and scratched at the back of his neck, feeling oddly out of his depths. With two sisters, he thought he would be better at handling women in situations such as this. “I am promised to another, you know. A woman who I have not met, who I do not love.” 

She visibly calmed, and he felt himself able to catch another breath. Though, not calmed as much as he would prefer. 

“Do you think Sansa loves Joffrey?” she asked. 

“She will not have to marry him,” he said. “We are going to get her back before that ever has to happen.” 

Myrcella shook her head, turning away from him and pacing out a few steps. If the two of them were going to have to fight, at least it was a beautiful day in beautiful woods to do so. She reached out a hand and rested it on the bark of a nearby tree, seeming to take a second to settle herself. 

“Do you know what they told me of  _ my  _ intended?” she asked without turning around. 

He was grateful for the wind’s help to carry the sentence to him. What did her face look like as she spoke softer than she had seconds before? It was nearly like he could imagine it—the soft ridge between her brows from concern, the darkness of distress in her eyes. He waited for her to continue as another fresh breeze washed over the both of them. 

“A single sentence. It was my Uncle Tyrion who told me of him. He said  _ He is a young man from Dorne who we have heard no ill will spoken of.  _ As if the most I could hope for was someone who simply wasn’t bad. He told me other things of course, that I would be safe there when war would be at King’s Landing’s doorsteps before long. Wrong, of course. I would never make it to Dorne before you took me.” 

She turned around now, and it was like he was seeing her completely for the first time. Until this moment, he had always felt as if he could only grasp at parts of her. Her wit or her charm or her kindness. She was all of these things, really, and he thought she might be it because of the vulnerabilities within her. Also, though, because she had no desire for the world to be as cruel as it seemed to be. 

“Do you wish you hadn’t been plucked from that life?” he asked. He wasn’t asking if she was happy to be here because he was fairly sure it wasn’t a fair question, but this one he truly wasn’t sure the answer. Whenever she discussed the path her life would have taken in Dorne, it seemed to be plagued with ambiguity. 

“I wish I wasn’t having my efforts wasted,” she said with a raise of a brow. “Or your mother’s efforts, or the efforts of all these men who risk their lives for you.”

How could he possibly describe to this princess across from him how he felt like his life was ripped in two? This princess who he had taken from her own life like she was nothing more than a pawn in his game, and quite truthfully she had been. It was a war tactic, barely a thought to the girl given, but now she was living and breathing across from him and she was more than he ever could have anticipated. 

Still, his choices seemed to tear him apart. He wanted to be in love, the sort of love his parents had.  _ We built it stone by stone,  _ Catelyn had once described to him, but was it stupid for him to hope for that flame and spark?  Maybe he was still no more than a boy in his heart if he had such notions of love. 

“Who do you fight for, princess?” he asked. “You give me plots, and you comfort my mother, and I have quite forgotten you are a Lannister and a Baratheon underneath it all. You’ve blinded me, and I can not seem to figure it out.” 

She took steps toward him until they were in the same space. Only a few steps away, she had to tilt her head up to look at him in the eyes. 

“I don’t want to damn my family,” she said. “But I would not mind you as the King of the North, with your family safe and by your side. I want those who are truly good, who deserve it, to help bring around a world worth living in. I think you are capable of it, Your Grace. I suppose that is why I dare to be so bold with you.” 

He sighed, feeling any lasting frustration with Myrcella fall away. How could he deny that? There was such respect brewing within him. 

“Can I trust you?” he asked, though he was half-certain he already did. How could he not after she had seen him in such an intimate moment and offered him a solution that never would have come to his mind? “I want to, and I do so hate having trust broken.” 

“I swear it,” she said, jutting her chin forward in a look that reminded him of Arya in her stubborn moments. “I will not break your trust by any means of my own. I hope for the same in return.” 

“I don’t want to waste your efforts.” He would try harder to give up the connection he had with Talisa, to remind himself that loving her meant worsening his odds at the game he had no desire to play. It wasn’t fair, but nothing that had happened to any of them was fair. “Would you let me walk you back to your tent?” 

Myrcella pushed her shoulders back and held out her arm as if waiting for him already. “You may,” she said, and the way she pushed forward reminded him so much of a Queen ready to take on her subjects it almost struck him as a vision, as if he had seen something of the future and not just a princess who was helping make him a better man. 

* * *

“I think you’re right.” Robb picked at his fingers, though it was a habit that had long been chastised out of him. A pot of blood bubbled at the corner of his thumb where he had picked the skin too hard. He hoped he could be forgiven this gesture in wartime.

Catelyn sighed in a way that sounded overwhelmingly tired. “About what?” 

“We should send the Kingslayer back to King’s Landing. It makes logistical sense, as you’ve said. The positives outweigh the negatives,” he began. “Would you speak to Lady Brienne about it and what needs to be done? I’d rather have them leave at an advantageous time for cover. The sooner, the better.” 

The way she soaked in his words left him satisfied in a decision for once. It felt like it might be the right thing, even if it could upset some. Having Jaime Lannister around this whole time had felt dangerous, as if at any moment he could do something disastrous that would affect the whole camp. Since Myrcella had arrived it felt like less of a worry, but Robb would feel better having the risk removed.  

“Will you send word?” she asked. 

“Sansa will be safer in their hands if they think we will be giving them something soon,” Robb said. “I don’t doubt word would get out from camp that he had been taken away at some point, so if the scroll is shot down and intercepted it won’t affect the plan much. Can Lady Brienne keep him safe?”

Catelyn nodded. “She would lay down her life to follow through on an oath.”

“I would much rather she stayed alive to complete this one,” he said, reaching up a hand and scratching at his beard. He remembered suddenly, the feeling of having his beard shaved off before the King had rode on Winterfell. It had made him feel so young and polished, then. 

Not often did he feel like a true man, and even less like a proper King, but there, making the decisions and hoping they proved right, he felt close to it. He felt almost as if his father would have been proud. 

“I will get it done,” she said, reaching forward to cup his cheek briefly. “Thank you,” she whispered as she parted, so light he nearly couldn’t tell if she had said it at all. 

* * *

That night Robb couldn’t sleep, and he walked through the camp as the sun was barely stretching over the sky. It was peaceful at this time, almost as if more blood and fighting wasn’t right on the horizon. He made his way easily to the Kingslayer’s cage.

Robb had expected to find it empty, but instead he found Myrcella kneeling in front of Jaime Lannister. Brienne was standing outside the cage, looking back and forth every few moments to see if anyone was around. She turned over her shoulder and looked at the pair. 

“We have to go it’s nearly daybreak,” she said. “Please say your final goodbyes, princess.”

How many people had Myrcella reached in her time here? Brienne seemed another to worry about her. He was grateful, though, because it seemed a great oversight to not think of Myrcella wanting to say goodbye. It was her family, and from what Robb had heard it seemed the two of them were close. 

He wondered if it was a closeness bred from imprisonment or more. Had Myrcella spent her whole life close to this man he considered rude, dishonorable, quite frankly annoying? If so, what could it possibly be that she saw within him? It seemed impossible to imagine. 

Myrcella dipped closer and the two whispered a few last words together before she went to kiss his forehead. Then she stood up and helped him follow suit, giving him off to Brienne. She gave a small wave before the two were off. 

Robb couldn’t help but stand and watch, feeling something like a voyeur. It must have been a minute at least, maybe longer, when she finally turned and spied Robb watching her. 

There was something fierce in her appearance. The tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and there was some dirt smudged at her chin. Her hair was falling out of her braid, and her dress had seen better days. She looked like a woman quite capable of taking the world on. She looked like someone who did not care at all that he had seen her—vulnerable and still powerful. 

He was trying to find words, but they failed to come. He didn’t need them anyways, as she had turned and walked away without any. 

* * *

The letter came a week later.

_ Robb,  _

_ I am sorry. I had to leave with Jojen and Meera Reed. I can’t possibly explain it, just know that we are heading North for something that will help the Great War. When I get back, I will be able to explain it all to you. Please know Rickon is safe at Winterfell with many people looking after him. Please try to understand.  _

_ Bran                                                         _

All at once, he felt a crushing weight take him over. Tears began running down his cheeks that he seemed unable to stop even if he wanted to, and a scream ripped from his throat. Guttural and raw. He kicked the closest table, throwing things from the surface and hearing a satisfying crash of glass on the ground. 

Things were so easily destructible, so easily broken. Nothing was safe in this world, nothing stable. Robb took out his anger like a child having a temper tantrum until his muscles were aching and everything felt like too much. He fell to the ground, unable to stand any longer. 

“Robb?” came a hurried voice as the sound of the tent’s flap whipped back and forth. “No one could find your mother, and I heard…” Myrcella trailed off, seemingly having seen him a wreck on the floor. 

When he looked up and met her eyes, he felt like a child. He felt raw and horrifically open. All she would have to do was rub salt on his open wounds, and he would be broken in front of her. So much for a King. 

“What happened?” she asked delicately, taking a step forward. It was clear she was deciding how far to move, how much she dare. 

Robb leaned his head back and face forward as if he was searching for the sun, but he was inside and no sun would come. Maybe he was asking absolution from the Gods, waiting for them to look down and finally take an ounce of pity on his weary soul. 

“There is nothing that can’t be broken,” he said finally. When he opened his eyes, she was a step away. 

Then, she was on the floor and slowly wrapping her arms around him.  _ She’s worried I’ll call her too familiar,  _ he thought.  _ As if I could possibly care.  _ He fell easily into her embrace, the tears renewed as if he was a young child again after scraping a knee. 

“Why can’t I keep my family together?” he asked. “I’ve failed them.” 

“You have not,” she reassured, reaching up a hand to hold his head into her shoulder. “The world is cruel, Robb. We are constantly fighting the cruelty, but you will get them back. You will find happiness again.” 

His father was already dead. Arya might be too. Sansa was at the hands of a man who would humiliate and belittle her for fun, and Bran had just left his younger brother alone in a castle for some grand adventure Robb wasn’t entirely privy to. They were as separated as they could be. All of them, lone wolves in the world. How would they possibly all survive to find their way back to one another? 

And after all this hardship, after the war was won and Robb got to go home, who would be the woman beside him? Would he even like her? Would he even get to be happy in that? It was for his family, though, and if they could be happy then maybe that should be enough. 

“Just let it out,” she said with a tired sigh. Myrcella adjusted beneath him so she could spread her legs out in front of herself and lean her back against the leg of the table. “You bear a world of weight, so just let it out.” 

He curled into her, feeling his shoulders continue to shake. Father had once said the end of the world could bring anyone together, and he couldn’t help but think of those words now. He would kill her brother in a second without another thought. Yet, an undeniable fondness for her had wormed its way inside. Here, he sat crying on her shoulder as if he wasn’t a king and her his captor. 

“It’s not fair you should have to comfort me,” he said after a minute, trying to regain his breath. He was sure his skin was red and dewy from the tears. He sniffled as he sat up. “I have done nothing but upset your life, and here you are with the compassion to hold a crying king who stole you away.” 

She sighed, twisting her body to look upon his face. She didn’t seem disturbed by what she saw. “Please stop saying you stole me it makes me feel horribly like chattel,” she said, and when he let out a watery chuckle she gave a soft smile. “I am here, and neither of us can do much about that at the moment. Well, maybe you more than I, but I understand the card you’re playing. You sent Jaime back to King’s Landing, not that I’m naive enough to think it was for me, but I’m glad all the same.”

“It still does not seem repayment enough for all your kindnesses,” he said. 

She smiled, and despite the fact that he still felt weary and, quite frankly, a bit weepy, he couldn’t help but feel his lips curve up a bit in response. 

“I’ve heard there are worse things than having a king indebted to you. After all, haven’t you heard that not all kindness is something that needs to be repaid? I am allowed to be kind for simply the sake of being it.”

He laughed, and it already made him feel lighter. 

Myrcella reached out and held his hand, giving it a squeeze. “You will figure it all out, I know you will, but for now you should get some sleep. You must be exhausted, Your Grace.” 

“Back to Your Grace?” he asked, finding it within himself to tease. “I recall earlier being called Robb.” 

Her pretty pale cheeks flushed pink, and it made his chest feel warmer. “I was too familiar. It is not the first time, and I apologize.”

“I do not mind,” he said. “You may call me Robb when it’s just us. You did just see me weeping like a child. I fear that's far more familiar than you simply calling me my name.” 

She nodded. “Well,  _ Robb.  _ I do request you go get some sleep. When you wake we can figure out the next steps.” 

He watched her look him down with those sparkling eyes of hers, and he thought on how she most likely meant her  _ we  _ as simply a statement on him and his counsel. Instead, though, he thought of that day all those weeks ago when she had helped him decide what to do with Theon. It felt like she was constantly finding him in emotional moments, and she was always helping him dig his way out. 

“Okay,” he agreed, because he trusted her. He liked her. She was too good for this world, truthfully, but he would soak in all her sunshine as long as he could. 

* * *

Lord Karstark had just hit his hand against the war table, knocking some of the pieces askew. Some of the other men grumbled along, the noise rising. Robb reached a hand up to the bridge of his nose, squeezing, before he continued.

“The Boltons and their army left?” he asked. “How did no one detect this before now?” 

“They left in the dead of night, and they did it well,” Lord Umber said. He grunted, then, clearing his throat. “There’d been lots of talk of them being upset that the Kingslayer was being returned to King’s Landing.” 

The Boltons had never shown themselves to be anything but loyal, and Robb was confused by the turn of events. Roose Bolton seemed practical, and this didn’t seem the sort of event to push him over the edge. He thought desperately of Winterfell and Rickon, missing it terribly and hoping it was safe. 

If the Boltons had left, where exactly were they intending to go? Home, he hoped. That would be best for everyone, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around it. Something seemed so off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. 

“We still have enough men for our next moves, and that's what matters,” Robb continued. “Let us not think on the traitors and continue to think on the good men who stay standing.” 

The lords cheered to that, and he felt himself grow larger. They needed the Young Wolf now, and that he could try to be. 

* * *

In all the time Robb had spent with Myrcella, he had never found his way inside her tent. It felt rude and invasive, and for a girl he had already taken everything from he found he liked the idea of leaving her this. That space was for her, and he would not step foot inside unless she wanted him to.

Though, tonight, he couldn’t help but make his way there. Unlike when he had sent the Kingslayer back to King’s Landing, this time he thought of her sooner. He thought of her personal connection, the news she would need to hear and who it might need to be heard from. 

He had his presence announced, and after getting the okay, he walked into her space. 

It looked nothing like her, not that it should. It wasn’t a room in a castle, but still he was surprised to find it so empty. There was something cold about it, and Myrcella was the opposite of that. 

She sat now in a chair in front of him, though she did move to curtsy for him. Even after all this time, she was perfect in her courtesies. “What can I do for you, Your Grace?” she asked. 

“Myrcella…” he began, and she watched the way her eyes widened at her name and the tone with which he spoke it. “King’s Landing has been attacked by your Uncle Stannis.” 

“What news have you heard?” she asked. 

“It seems your Uncle Tyrion fought him off as hand to your brother,” he said. “All we have received is news that your grandfather swept in at the last moment.”

“He would,” she said, eyes hazy as she stared at nothing, thinking the situation over. “You’ve heard nothing else?” 

Robb took a deep breath. “There is… one more rumor. Something we can’t fully get confirmed yet, but…” 

Myrcella snapped her eyes back to his. They were filled with both terror and a thirst for more. What an inappropriate time to notice how truly stunning they were. 

“Word came out from the castle that King Joffrey’s betrothed is missing.” 

“Sansa,” Myrcella released in a breath. “Where is she Robb?” 

He felt dread fill his stomach. “I don’t know, but I hope.” 

Myrcella stood up, making her way in front of him. She reached up, seemingly unafraid in this moment, and clasped a hand against his cheek. Her voice was light and soothing, when she spoke, like a singer. “I hope, too.”


	3. two princesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Sansa's path changes in King's Landing, Myrcella accompanies the Starks to Riverrun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so like if you don't care about the theon/sansa portion of this story this chapter is a bit more heavy in that, and honestly you can /probably/ skim it. there are some things that may be plot important but that's more toward the end, and there's some robbcella in there too so i suggest not skipping all of it. 
> 
> i know nothing about actual ships let's all just suspend disbelief pls i want no historians telling me how wrong i am i can accept like zero criticism at this time.

Sansa startled awake, frightened by the visions of her dream which still clung to the sides of her brain like honey. There were things she desperately wished she could forget, things she wished were different, but there was little to be done. Her dread grew as she felt the moisture of her legs, and when she pulled away the blanket it was her own blood staring back at her.

The panic took over. “No, _no,_ ” she cried, mind whirling.

This would be the end of her, and she moved up and off the mattress. Her stomach tightened as she grabbed the knife and tried to cut out the spot. Shae came in next, and as she ran off to follow the other maid down the hall Sansa knew it was done. There was simply no going back.

Her horrible, golden cage had never felt so locked, so confining. She thought about her brother fighting a war, and her sister who had disappeared without a trace. Oh, what she would do to be able to switch places with the captured Princess Myrcella. Robb would never treat her poorly, never beat her in front of court and make her see the horrors he’d done to her family.

If only to be back with her brother and her mother. _Her family._ How sweet it would be.

* * *

There was nothing surprising about Cersei calling Sansa to her chamber, not after the Hound had seen the blood. This was her role in life, and maybe Sansa should have grown to accept it. After all, she had walked right into this, hadn’t she? It was what sometimes kept her up at night until she couldn’t dare close her eyes for fear of seeing it all over again—Joffrey’s cruelty and her father’s beheading. Was she here by her own hand?

She felt like a stupid bird who had flown into a mirror because it had looked like there was so much more world ahead of them.

“Did your mother not prepare you?” Cersei asked. “You seem so… surprised.”

Sansa kept her head bowed as she made her way to the chair. How she missed her nights with her mother as she would brush out her hair and tell her stories. It had somehow made Sansa feel beautiful and mature all at once, like someone deserving of her mother’s secrets and private thoughts. She had practically convinced herself she was an adult and an equal back then before realizing how ludicrous a thought it was outside of the comfort of that safe space.

“I hadn’t expected it to be so,” she began, thinking it over, “messy.” In truth, she had never thought it would be something that seemed to take her future away from her. In her childish folly, her blooming would have been a momentous occasion. But here in the castle, it was something that brought the horrible threats of the future closer. Until now, she had felt if she could just hold on a little longer there might be a way out. If Robb could steal the princess, then certainly he could steal his own sister back?

Now she was truly, without question, trapped. There would be no going back from this. It sat like a heavy rock in her stomach alongside her new cramps.

“Wait until you’ve birthed a child.” Cersei walked back and forth, and Sansa wondered what it was she hoped to accomplish. Was she always on display, showing her dominance in any room? “You’re a woman now, do you have any idea what that means?”

“I’m fit to bear children for the King.” It had seemed so delightful once, the possibility of it.

“You are, and you will,” Cersei said. She moved slower now, and Sansa imagined it seemed as if she was walking into a memory as she moved toward the light of the window. She was there but not there, and the sun washed over her features and golden hair. “Do you know what the worst part of the entire ordeal is?”

There was danger in answering wrong, in answering at all in truth, so she stayed quiet. Cersei did love her monologues and speeches, and Sansa was her favorite ear. It had been kinder before her brother took Myrcella. Now, Sansa’s face seemed to remind Cersei all that she had lost and still stood to lose. Memories of her daughter would bubble to the surface like lifelines. Did Catelyn do the same of her? Think of her daughter trapped away somewhere and need to compensate with happier moments from the past?

“I do not, Your Grace,” she finally answered.

Cersei hummed, a soft sound. It seemed too gentle to come from her almost. “When the hard part is done, when you’ve labored and screamed and done everything in your power to birth this babe, they take them from you. You get to hold them, of course, but from the moment they come from you the world begins to try to own them as if you haven’t held them yourself for nine moons.

“I remember with Myrcella… She was so sweet from the very first moment I had her. I looked down at her small, round face and knew the world was going to be too harsh for her. When the wet nurse came to take her, I couldn’t bear the thought of handing her over. I let her suckle at my own breast, hoping the closeness we felt… Well, I never got a mother, but Myrcella she had me. She had only smiles, but I would be her claws need be.”

There was an indistinguishable moment of silence between them now, where for a instant Sansa couldn’t decipher if it was cruelty or a dangerous kindness that would come. Even Cersei had her moments. Sometimes, she could almost swear Cersei was trying to groom her, to help her, in the small ways she thought she could. Cersei turned, her eyes harder now, and Sansa almost thought she could see a shimmer that spoke to unshed tears.

“Then your brother took her, the savage wolf.” It was a hiss, and Sansa recoiled.

Some days, Sansa would have done everything to take back the fact that Robb had stolen Myrcella. The castle had grown colder since, and she had bruises still on her back to show for the defiance.

 _Your brother says I am not to touch you, or my sister will suffer the same fate,_ Joffrey had sneered, _but what do I care of women? He knows nothing, and I will kill him and take the princess back myself._

The Hound had needed to walk her back to her room after the display that followed, holding onto her elbow securely in case her legs gave way beneath her. The pain had made her curve inward, her legs weak and her stomach tender.

Other days, though, she was glad beyond belief. She was happy they understood the pain she and her family had felt. They needed to know that not even the Lannisters were untouchable. For the first time in months, Sansa had felt as if there really was going to be an end to this war after hearing the news of the capture.

“I am sorry for my traitor brother’s actions,” she said, dipping her head lower. “I am loyal to the one true King, my one day husband. The idea of having his children delights me so.”

“Of course you are,” Cersei said with a sigh as she sat into her chair. Her eyes flickered to the wine on the end of the desk, but she did not reach for it. “I will give you one piece of womanly wisdom, and I suggest you listen. The more people you love, the weaker you are. You’ll do things for them you know you shouldn’t do. You’ll act the fool to make them happy, to keep them safe. Love no one but your children. On that front, a mother has no choice.”

“Shouldn’t I love Joffrey, Your Grace?” she asked.

The smile Cersei sent her looked full of pity, nearly tired. It made Sansa feel more lonely than she had yet, more at despair with her future. She wanted to go home.

“You can try, little dove.” It nearly sounded kind.

There was nothing kind about King’s Landing, though. It may have taken her a while to learn it, but Sansa would never forget.

* * *

“Should we sing a hymn?” she asked, calming the crowd. Her own heart beat wildly in the cage of her chest. Unrelenting and alive still.

“You need to get out of here,” Shae said, holding onto her upper arms tightly. “You can’t let this one hurt you.”

Sansa’s eyes darted around her, pausing on Ilyn Payne before watching all the women as they sang. They all felt safe because she had given them purpose and comforted them. If only someone cared enough for her to try to ease that pain. If she ever had the power she would do everything she was capable of to make sure people were happy, that they never had to feel the fear that haunted her at the corner of her life for _years._

Her eyes focused on Shae across from her—fierce, beautiful Shae—and she remedied her earlier thought. She had been alone in this world, truly alone, but Shae had saved her from the crawling pain of it. Even with all the darkness she had suffered, she found it in herself to be thankful for that.

“I can’t leave them,” Sansa said, eyes darting to those terrified women singing as if any of the Gods cared enough to save them. It was devastating to know the truth. If there were Gods, they cared not for the suffering of any of them. Maybe when you were that large all the wars of men seemed like nothing more than squabbles of children.

Shae reached up a hand to her shoulder and squeezed. “You can’t think of them. You have a decision to make.”

Sansa’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

Looking around her briefly, Shae dragged Sansa closer to the door out of earshot. “You either need to go to your room or mine.”

“Why would I go to yours?”

The world was spinning too fast, and Sansa could feel her heart beating through every extremity. The sounds of battle outside grew louder, and she felt the women’s singing grow to cover the screams of death.

“If you go to yours lock the door and do not let a single soul in. Stannis won’t hurt you when he gets the city. You can hide there and stay safe.” She dipped closer, their faces intimately near. “If you go to mine, he will take you home. I’ve spoken to him, seen the letter. I wouldn’t tell you if I didn’t think it a viable option. You have to choose.”

She had to mean Robb, right? Who else would bother coming into King’s Landing for her or bother the danger of sneaking her out? And if Shae trusted them, Shae who trusted no one, then it must be him. A hope fluttered awake inside of her.

“I’ll go to yours,” Sansa said. In her mind all she could think on were those red sheets, the blood covering her thighs and how much it had felt like a death sentence. “Show me yourself where it is. Come with me.”

“I can not,” she said before whispering the directions, and Sansa tried to stamp them in her brain. “Fly now, my dear. There won’t be much time.”

This was goodbye, Sansa realized. She did not know how to say it. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

Shae dipped forward and kissed her cheek, squeezing her arm one last time. Then, Sansa ran.

* * *

Shae’s room was small, dark, and neat. She could not imagine spending hours here, but Shae never had spent much time there anyways, had she? The space held no personal touches. For a second Sansa thought of how little she knew of the woman who had protected her.

Then she thought of nothing but her brother.

“Robb?” she whispered, stepping fully into the darkness.

There was a sound behind her, and she turned in time to see a figure step from behind the door. Her body jolted awake until her eyes adjusted.

It was not Robb. The image was familiar. Shaggy brown hair and a lean figure, handsome even while weary. It was the closest she had felt to home in a very long time, so much so she felt her throat constrict. She could easily imagine Jeyne dipping forward to whisper to her over meals, _He looks handsome today, does he not?_ Sansa usually remained calm, kept her cool in the demure, coy way her mother had helped teach her. _Perhaps, but then he opens his mouth and that ruins that._ They would giggle, her brothers so annoyed by her girlish actions they rolled their eyes.

“Theon,” she said, her voice small. She could make him out easily in the darkness, but as he took another step forward the past came rushing forward.

 _Have you heard?_ Joffrey had mocked her, sitting haphazardly in his chair. _A Greyjoy has captured your hideous excuse for a home. What a king your traitor brother makes._

His face transformed as she tightened her own, lips pursing, fists clenched at her side. She had risked her life to come to this room when she could be in her own chambers, waiting for Stannis to sack the city. How truly childish she still felt at times, despite the bloom of womanhood she had endured. How had she ever expected her brother to come for her as he fought a war?

“I’m here to take you home,” he said, reaching out a hand. “We have to go now, Princess.”

His voice twisted around the title, and she felt herself stumble backward. “You took Winterfell. You captured it like it wasn’t your _home_.” Her stomach wrapped around itself, until it felt so painfully tight she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to breathe through it.

He had taken her home like it meant nothing, like it was merely something to be taken as a point of pride. How could she respect him as he desecrated the one thing she would have done anything to return to since she stepped foot in this horrible place? Winterfell seemed sweeter to her than any Heaven these days.

“Why would I go with you anywhere?” Sansa asked.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said with a groan, reaching out and grabbing her forearm.

“Let me go, you _traitor_ ,” she said, tugging back her arm. When would the world stop throwing cruel jokes at her.

“Do you want to stay here?” he asked, stepping closer still. His words were sharp, and she could see he was already done with her anger. Had he no remorse at all? It was strange to look at him and not be looking up still like a child, eyeing him from below. They nearly seemed the same height now, and it showed how much time had changed them all. “Robb sent me, but if you’d rather stay Joffrey and Cersei’s puppet, then be my—”

“Robb sent you?” she asked.

“Come with me,” he said, “and I’ll explain it. The longer we stand here chatting, the less our chances are of getting out of here.”

Sansa closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, and thought of returning to Winterfell. She thought about Robb’s arms around her and her mother watching her from across the room. She felt the warmth of it. When she opened them up, she could almost imagine Theon was someone who hadn’t betrayed everything she would have fought tooth and nail for now.

“Tell me the truth, please. If this is a trick… I can not bear it.” Her voice cracked a little at the end, and she hated herself for it. Even after this all time, she was still a simpering little girl. She had learned nothing.

“Sansa,” he said, reaching out a hand for her, “I promise on the little honor I have left. This is not a trick. Please, let’s go before we both are killed.”

Feeling like a woman with no possible choices at all, feeling like that stupid little bird about to jump from one cage to a slightly shinier one, she took his hand back.

* * *

They didn’t talk as they rushed through the halls, as they trudged through a tunnel underneath the castle, or as they met two of Theon’s men in a small boat by a small alcove of shore Sansa had never known to be there. If she had, she would have spent hours in the solitude of it. The battle was so close now Sansa could hear the yells and clash of metal as if it was right beside her.

She couldn’t imagine how they had a boat in the midst of all this untouched. They did not talk, though, and they sat in the boat for a long stretch as they paddled around the shore and away from any sounds of a fight. When they got to a boat, it displayed Stannis Baratheon’s sigil. How long had Theon been planning this capture, knowing that Stannis was going to be attacking and taking it as an opportunity?

The men on the ship were rough and unwelcoming, but they did nothing more than give her looks. Looks she could handle, at least, as she had been dealing with them since coming to King’s Landing. The way men would look at her after Joffrey beat her in the throne room, eyes darting for any stretch of skin they could find as if she was something merely for entertainment, for consumption. It made her sick now just to think of it.

“Go below to the rooms,” Theon ordered her. “We have to get out quick, and it might not be safe on deck.”

Sansa opened her mouth to respond, but Theon was already turning away to work on the deck. If they had been back at Winterfell and he had snubbed her like that, she would have turned up her nose. It would have been downright offensive, but they were not back there in the safe walls of Winterfell. They were on his ship, with his men, who had taken her from the castle.

What could have possibly went down between Robb and Theon since he had captured Winterfell that lead to this? The whole situation was too difficult to properly grasp, leaving her splintered in the process. Part of her was happy to be free, part of her was distressed it was Theon, and part of her was still terrified of what would come next.

She found the cabin she assumed Theon was talking about and fell into the bed. It smelled too much like the sea, and the boat rocked wildly against the water. The sounds of the battle still reached her ears, and she thought about all those women still up in that tower. She thought about Shae. Her stomach cramped, and without a moment’s warning she was crying.

It was a mix of emotions she couldn’t begin to untangle right now, but she wouldn’t marry Joffrey at least. That alone made her cry louder, feeling the release of that weight on her shoulders. She cried, and cried, and she fell asleep.

* * *

At first, the sea did not suit Sansa much. It was fine, but it felt unsteady beneath her feet. Her stomach felt queasy, and she hated walking the decks with all those men she did not know yet she hated being locked away even more. No one bothered her on the boat, though, and that was more than she could ever dare hope for in King’s Landing.

Part of her wanted Theon to bother her, though, so she could figure out the truth of what he had begun to say to her in Shae’s room. For a ship that wasn’t particularly large, though, he had managed to avoid her well the first few days. Maybe it was better, she thought, then she wouldn’t have to feel the anger that enveloped her at the notion of what he had done. She could think of what she would return to as the sea air rushed through her hair, a sensation she had grown rather fond of.

When she got back to her family, she would never leave them again. She would treat them right this time, be kind and loving because it did not make her weak. It was silly all the time she had spent caring about perception until it nearly made her cruel, but she had seen firsthand how cruelty in the name of decorum was nothing pleasant. Sansa could be different.

Sansa stopped near the front of the boat and watched the wide expanse of water in front of her. It was dizzying to see the way the blue ocean met the bluer sky.

“I’ve never gotten used to it,” came a voice behind her.

Sansa turned to see a man about as old as her father would be now, thin with thick gray and black hair. His face was stern, but his eyes seemed kind. That was something she found couldn’t be said for most of the men on this ship. She had done well to avoid them, try not to bother them in a hope they would not bother her, but this one seemed bolder.

“I am afraid I fail to read your mind,” she said, turning her eyes back to the water.

A part of her did not want to give any words to this man who had probably taken part of capturing her home, but the more she thought about it the less it mattered. Theon had given the order, and this man most likely was just a foot soldier in a way. She had certainly followed orders _she_ did not believe in. The world was more complicated than simple good and bad, though it had been easier when she believed that. 

“The view of it,” he said, voice gruff. He was twisting a long rope in a design Sansa’s eyes wished to follow. It reminded her of the small twists and turns of a needle in fabric, something her hands missed just to have something to do. “I never felt at home anywhere but the water. Bet you might feel different ‘bout that, but you’ve seemed to find sea legs.”

“What’s your name?” she asked, realizing it was rather rude. But he had made no attempts to call her by her title, so what did it possibly matter of courtesies when they were in a landless territory.

“Dalton,” he said with a brief nod. His eyes darted up to see her staring at the rope, and he held it out to her. “Would you like to learn?”

“I couldn’t,” she began, but what else did she have to do? It was stare at the sea or hide away in her rooms. She pushed the small hairs that had frizzled out from her braid from the sea air behind her ears. “I’ll watch.”

He grunted in response, and after a time he passed it over and let her try. Then he taught her a few more knots, _you never know_ , he said. After the third, she found herself laughing slightly at his rough words. She let out a breath that felt like lead, that she hadn’t known had been trapped within her all this time, and it felt like a true freedom.

“What happened to the third sail?” she asked, noticing the spot it should have hung.

Dalton’s eyes darted up to it, and he grabbed the ropes back from her to finish up the job he was meant to be doing. “It got clipped on our way in, so we’re down a sail. No one on the ship can patch it up.”

Sansa’s fingers twitched. “Do you still have the sail? Anything to repair it?”

“Huh,” he said, his lips spreading into something like a greasy smile, something that was edged in near disbelief, “who knew the Princess of the North could possibly be helpful on a ship.”

She had a feeling for Iron Island men, this might be as nice as it got.

* * *

Hours later she was sitting on the back deck with the piles of fabric spilling over her lap and around her. It was comforting to have a purpose and the feel of the fabric enveloping her. She heard footsteps approach, and she looked up to see Theon leaning against the side of the ship in an attempt at being casual.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he asked, squinting against the sun.

Seeing him now in the sunlight, _properly_ seeing him, she could see how much different he had grown in the time since they were apart. It wasn’t indistinguishable, and she was sure she looked far more different than he did, but she was glad for the differences. In a way, she could keep the Theon of her childhood different than this traitor in front of her.

“Making myself useful,” she said in a huff. It was rather ridiculous, the image she must be making. It was unladylike, and she found she rather liked that idea. For the last years of her life she felt as if a string was wrapped around her torso filled with things she had to be—kind, courteous, smart—and the longer she stayed amongst the lion’s den the tighter that string grew. Here, on the ship, she could finally cut it free even if only for a short while.

None of these men cared at all whether she acted the perfect princess or if she was kind at all. Screw them. They had taken her home and now they took her. Screw Theon most of all, who dared to stand above her like a captain when he was nothing more than a scared boy. Sansa was tired of boys acting like they could do whatever they wanted in the world, as if they were simply playing a game and not treating the people around them like chess pieces easily disposed.

“You should be below decks, avoiding this lot,” he said with a twist of his head. “How did you even get the sail down? It was tied up to the mast.”

“Dalton got a few men to take it down when they found out I could patch it up,” she said, keeping her eyes on the fabric in front of her. If she could focus on each stitch and making them small, tight, perfect, then she could _do_ something.

“ _Dalton_ ,” Theon said, the name salty on his lips. “So, you’re close friends with these men then? They’re not safe to—”

Sansa snapped her gaze up, and though she couldn’t see her own face it must have been something truly steely the way Theon’s words cut off. Did he still think her a little girl who would sing songs and listen to fairytales with a wistful heart? No, she was beyond that. He didn’t get to stand above her and take any moral ground. She wouldn’t allow it.

“I see a boy in front of me that isn’t safe,” she said. “He betrayed my family, he took my home. What would you have me do, Theon? You haven’t sought me out for days while I sit, wondering if I’ve found myself in another prison or what has happened to find me here. Is my brother safe? Is my mother? I know _nothing_ , and you avoid me because you’re embarrassed. Well, you _should_ be.”

“I’m the captain of this ship,” he said in a hiss, bending lower. “I saved you from them.”

“Don’t act like you did it for me,” she said, matching his words. “All these years I’ve known you, and I’ve never seen you do anything but for yourself.”

Sansa could have sworn she saw the way the words physically hit him as he recoiled. When he stood up straight again, his face returned to the neutral air of superiority he had found her with. She wanted to smack it off, get back to the anger. At least when they fought, she got closer to the truth. He couldn’t understand how for years she had anger boiling inside of her she couldn’t do a damn thing about.

“Thank you for fixing the sail, but I have things I must attend to.” His words were clipped, and Sansa wasn’t sure why the anger had fallen away as he spoke again. She should still be fuming, but in its place somehow an eerie sort of sadness had found its spot instead. He turned away from her, and she could see him just the way he had looked when she rode away from Winterfell to King’s Landing. When he turned back around, she was pulled to the present. “If you wish to discuss everything that's happened I can find you later.”

She bit her lip, trying to regain all her composure. “Yes,” she said. “All I have is free time it would seem.”

It looked like he was about to smirk over at her, but then he turned away. The lonely sea seemed to echo something inside of her, speak to the profound feeling of being by herself she had grown to hold as a constant. Her heart ached so painfully for her family, for connection.

* * *

Despite his words, he did not find her that night. The next as she was about to ready herself for bed, there was a knock on the door. She had spent most of her day in her cabin, finding time to switch between seething, pacing, and staring at stretches of wall. There were still many things that haunted her, that probably would for the rest of her life, and she did not know how to hold them all within her.

“It’s me,” came his voice through the door, and if she thought him capable of it the sound would have almost seemed desperate.

Her eyes glared at the wood of the door in a moment of brief rebellion before she made her way across the room and let him in.

“Do you have time to talk now?” he asked, eyes darting past her to look at the small space she called her own.

“It’s rather late,” she said, “and you smell like ale.”

He brought a hand up and ran it through his hair. In the movement’s wake, it flew in a million directions. “I’m not drunk, I just…”

 _Needed the courage_ , she finished for him. Or maybe he needed something to make it easier to get through this. Either she could understand, really. She opened the door a stretch wider and closed it behind him.

It struck her how they never would have been allowed alone like this in their youth, and it was still improper now. There was something funny about that, and she could find a small laugh bubbling to her lips. She had been beaten in a throne room and verbally assaulted, but it was standing alone with a man that was looked down upon.

Theon’s brow arched in confusion, and she shook her head. It didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry I have no seat to offer you,” she said, still holding onto those pleasantries she didn’t know how to give up.

Theon failed to seem bothered and made himself comfortable on the edge of her bed. She pursed her lips, but there was no point in arguing about this. The bed dipped as she sat beside him, though with as much space as the length would allow between them.

“Robb is safe as is your mother,” he began with. His eyes focused on some spot of her floor, and she found a spot of her own to make this all easier. If she looked at the profile of his face, it was harder to sort through all the things she felt. “I was sent away to get them ships from my father. That was before Robb took the Princess Myrcella.”

There were a million questions bubbling to the surface, but she found herself clenching her teeth onto the fragile skin of her lips to stop them. She needed all this truth, so buried by the lies and duplicities she had been fed, and she was scared angering him would take them away.

“It was stupid, I…” he trailed off, voice nearly fragile. “I truly thought I would be welcomed like a prince. I was nothing. All those years in Winterfell, I had felt like a prisoner. A well-treated one, yes, but I always thought one day I would come home and all the things that never made sense inside of me would suddenly fit together. It just made it worse.”

“So you took Winterfell because you were angry?” Sansa asked, trying to keep her own fury bottled away. It was worse because part of her could understand the words Theon was saying. She had been a prisoner, too, and told how grateful she should be for it. Though, her father was something much different than the Lannisters.

“I was trying to prove I was Ironborn,” he said with a nod. “To my family, to Robb. I could prove them all wrong, but it just destroyed everything more. Robb did exactly what he always does, too. He was so _good_.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He offered me a chance to fix it,” he said, finally looking up from the floor to meet her eyes. “Come get you, he said. If I could save the Princess of the North then he would forgive the sins. Made me use my _treacherous thievery_ for good.”

Her hands held tightly onto the fabric of her sheets as she tried to retain purchase on all this new information. Robb had tried to save her, and that thought made the back of her eyes itch with potential tears. She looked at Theon. She wanted to punch him, to hurt him, but she saw the smallest sliver of something she understood. That disgusted her more in some ways, but the fact that he had been able to be honest with her was something she had never seen from him. She hoped if not for herself, then for Robb, that Theon could turn a new leaf and keep it turned.

“I’m still incredibly mad at you,” she said, but her words didn’t sound it as much as she had intended. “I am only trusting you the barest bit because I have no other options afforded me.”

“Aye, my lady,” he said.

“I believe I’m a princess now, if the news I’ve heard is correct,” she said, feeling her lips twitch at the edges.

A guffaw pushed through his chest, and she found herself laughing beside it. When was the last time she had laughed? The sound was lighter than air. 

“I thought you might like that,” he said, the laughs dying away among them. For a few minutes, they sat in the sounds of the waves outside and the rickety ship. “What happened to you in there?” he asked quietly.

She tried to decide if it was mere curiosity or concern with which he asked. It mattered if she was going to talk about the things that transpired. No, she couldn’t do that with him tonight. It had taken everything to do this, to try to start building up a layer of trust with him again. He would have to work his way back in with them all—saving her did not give him a free pass.

“Not tonight,” she said, looking away to the lantern in her room that flickered. “I should really get to bed.”

“Alright,” he said as he stood up. He made his way to the door without any more words, opening it and standing in the liminal space. “We should be back with your brother in a handful of weeks.”

It was a gift beautifully wrapped and handed to her. That feeling of wanting to cry sprung up again, but this time it was from pure joy.

“Goodnight,” she said, already thinking about the dreams she would have as she laid her head on that pillow. All the memories she could happily revisit no longer tinged with the pang of longing she endured.

He nodded and disappeared. Alone, she prepared to dream.

* * *

Myrcella was happy to travel away from campgrounds to the possibility of actual _walls_ , but she did wish she wasn’t stuck in a caravan. Usually, it was fine enough, but she was feeling too idle and awfully ready to get cleaned up. Not to mention, it wasn’t exactly under the best circumstances.

The castle was nice though not overly impressive, but Myrcella could have sworn it was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. To be grounded in an actual home for a while, the thought was luxurious. She could already imagine the bath she would receive and how she would sit in the water until it was lukewarm because she had drained every last drip of warmth. She might even be able to find the resources to fix up her dresses and get herself in order.

She would be going to a funeral, after all. It would be rude to come looking shabby, enemy or not. The way Catelyn had looked after Myrcella had heard the news was still stuck to the back of her eyelids. There had been something empty then, like there was a feeling of inevitability. The world would keep taking things from them. How tired she must be.

Myrcella came because she could not be trusted left behind, but mostly Myrcella was happy to come. She had grown accustomed to seeing Robb and Catelyn’s faces, and she realized now how lonely the world would seem without the distractions they provided.

“Get cleaned up,” Catelyn told her as she showed Myrcella the room she would be staying in, not far from her own. “Robb or I will come escort you to the funeral unless you would rather stay in your rooms.”

“I will come,” she said, trying to convey how sorry she was for her loss despite the circumstances that surrounded them. “I would like to pay my respects.”

Catelyn opened her mouth before shutting it and disappearing down the halls. Myrcella hadn’t truly realized how quiet it could be again without the sounds of men, horses, and impending battle.

* * *

There was something that seemed to make sense about Catelyn’s tenacity now that Myrcella saw the Blackfish. Less so with Edmure, but Myrcella understood that there were odd eggs in every family. Maybe she was her own, truth be told. She had struggled to fill into the Lannister and Baratheon legacies on both sides.

As Edmure missed the third arrow, Myrcella could feel Robb tense up beside her. He had failed to say any words to her since escorting her to the dock besides for a terse good day, and she wondered what it was like to be around lost family you did not much know.

It had felt sort of like that when Robert passed. There was good to him, of course, and Myrcella could remember sweet things of him. The times he would compliment her or divulge her with stories of his life gone by that her and Tommen would latch onto with the energy of children. For a time, she had looked up at him like a daughter should her father, as a girl would look at a king.

There was such a deep sadness in growing up and realizing adults were merely people, and they had their faults, too. They knew as much about this world as any of them, maybe, and Myrcella had felt the most sadness at realizing it was sort of like saying goodbye to a true stranger when her father passed. She had never known him, and she never would.

He wasn’t even her real father she knew, yet she still couldn't deny there was a pull of Baratheon in her despite being pureblood Lannister.

The Blackfish stepped forward and yanked the bow from Edmure, knocking an arrow and waltzing away with a surety that Myrcella found it hard to doubt. As the boat burst into flame, she could feel both the Starks beside her take a breath. Myrcella said a silent prayer in her head for this man she had never met who had helped raise a woman she admired after all this time.

As everyone began filing out back to the castle, Myrcella felt Robb stay close to her side.

“Would you mind a walk?” he asked her, dipping closer to her ear. “I have to talk to Edmure and the Blackfish of battle plans, but I think I need a minute of rest before.”

“I think I could find time for it,” she said through a joking smile, light as to not weigh down further the already heavy day.

They began to walk the edge of the water together, and Myrcella watched the way it rippled in the surprisingly sunny day. It was beautiful, and yet she knew it held power. She thought about the boats that had sailed into King’s Landing to take the castle, and how close she had been to losing the only family she had left.

“Are you going to scold Edmure?” Myrcella asked as a bird chirped somewhere nearby. She couldn’t help but feel lighter with the sound. “He hasn’t exactly been following your orders, has he?”

Robb sighed, eyes watching the shore too. “I should. He is quite arrogant without much to back it up. The whole time he was pulling arrows back and missing, I couldn’t help but think of how Theon could have done it with a single pull barely looking. He was always so good at the bow.”

There was the feeling of memory around them, of the painful past that clung to Robb as he spoke those words. She wanted to help relieve that pressure. 

“I’m sure you could have done it much better yourself,” she replied.

She could feel his eyes on her, and she turned to meet his gaze. His face looked tired. His beard was rough, his skin showing spots and lines that had not been there when she first met him. He was still unbearably handsome, and there were no signs of the boy she had first met. Now, in front of her, he looked quite like the King she had imagined he could be.

“Have you heard any word of your sister?” she asked, turning to halt their walk and watch the water together instead.

She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Did he still see the tiny princess he had stolen, or had he truly grown to respect her counsel and words? It seemed like he put weight on her thoughts, but he was a man wilder than she knew how to understand at times. A part of her wished he thought of her as beautiful—as beautiful as Talisa and his sister who turned men’s gazes without trying. It was vain and stupid when there were many more important things to be concerned with.

His eyes fell from her face back to the water. “Not as of yet. It would be dangerous for Theon or Sansa to send word, so I continue to hope for the best.”

“If someone else had taken her captive, I’m certain you would have heard word of it already,” Myrcella said.

“So, she is either dead or with Theon,” Robb said. “I fear that doesn’t quite settle me.”

Feeling rather bold, Myrcella reached out and took his arm. He looked down at her, but she didn’t dare look up. He seemed to regain composure, but she could feel him lean closer into her.

“We will hear soon,” Myrcella said. “Have you heard anything from King’s Landing?”

Now that Sansa wasn’t a prisoner, they knew how little collateral Joffrey had to keep them in line. With Myrcella, Robb had the upper hand in many ways. Would Myrcella want to return home if given the chance? She had spent a long while thinking only of helping to get Sansa out, of doing what she could to ease the pain of the Starks around her who had wormed their way into her hearts. The after still felt far.

Maybe she really, truly was a traitor to her own blood. At this point, her family wouldn’t even want her back if they had known what she had all done.

“No,” Robb said. “Do you wish I had?”

Myrcella sighed. She didn’t know how to answer that at all. “I wish Tommen was king,” she decided upon, unable to touch what they had been discussing.

“Why is that, princess?”

His arm was comforting so close to her, and she knew she took too many liberties but she thought it made Robb sort of fond of her. That, she liked more than the liberties themselves. It was dangerous, the game she was starting to feel herself play. Desperately, she reminded herself of those words Jaime had said to her months ago. _Even better, be smart_. She would hate to let them all down by doing something incredibly stupid.

“Joffrey is unreasonable, emboldened by his own power,” she explained. “If Tommen was king… We could work with that. He is not bad, just a young boy who could grow into someone better. With him, we could break peace and get you your kingdom, perhaps.”

“All I’ve done to you and your family, and you still believe me worthy of ruling? You would truly let your family lose power for me to gain it?”

Maybe that was what made good kings, she thought. People who weren't sure they deserved to be them at all. If one could understand the weight of what it really meant, then they could use that weight accordingly. Robert had not thought of the weight at all, and Joffrey loved it and the pain it could cause. Neither did justice for anyone.

“I care not of the game. I care for people,” she said, and then she rested her head on his shoulder as if she hadn’t already taken too many liberties. They could both use the comfort in this moment, though, and she had not heard any complaint from him. “I would rather so many stopped dying.”

“You are good,” he said like it was a pure statement of fact and not a compliment. “You have a good heart. I think I might be made better by it. What will I do when you go?”

Myrcella very rarely thought on when that time would come. It never much struck her as important, but there was a sort of longing in Robb’s voice that was too delicate for her to hold. In another life, maybe he was asking her to stay.

She stood up and let go of his arm. This familiarity was dangerous, and there would be a time where it would only make it all hurt more. “Suffer, surely,” she said in a play at a joke. The words nearly got stuck in her throat.

As he turned back to her, she gave him a smile because it was what she knew how to do. He gave her one in return, slightly forced perhaps, and they walked back to the castle. They walked back to the responsibilities that burdened them.

* * *

It was strange to find herself back on land after weeks at sea. There was something comforting about it, though, and knowing they were that much closer to getting back to her family. After a few stumbling steps, she felt the strength return to her legs. Unfortunately, the peace didn’t last.

They were coming into the first tavern to stop for food and a night’s rest before deciding the rest of their journey, when they heard the news.

“The Boltons have Winterfell,” Sansa overheard as they sat down. She felt Theon tense next to her when seconds earlier he had been happily about to order some ale. “What is that blasted Robb Stark doing that he can’t keep his own home?”

Sansa reached for his arm and gripped it tightly, waiting to see if any more words were to come.

“I’ve heard it was some plot from the Lannisters,” the other voice came. “With that princess taken and Stannis attacking, they needed to hit him hard. Can’t believe a northman would turn on their own, though.”

“They wouldn’t, there’s no fucking way that's true,” said a third. “Have you heard the Stark girl escaped, though? Now, that's something wild. What I wouldn’t do for a piece of a young, wild princess. If she’s anything like her wolf king brother, I’m sure—”

“We need to go,” Theon said, grabbing her arm back and escorting her out of the building.

Sansa’s heart was beating wildly so that it felt like it was all she could hear in her ears, and she tried to keep her composure calm as the two of them walked out of the tavern as to not cause any suspicion. When they were back in the open, Sansa rested her back against the side of the building and took a steadying breath.

“Do you think it’s true? The Boltons really did take Winterfell?” she asked. Why would there be a rumor if it wasn't true? But she found it hard to believe the Boltons would betray the Starks like that. None of it made sense.

Though, none of it made sense when Theon took it the first time, either. The anger she originally felt after first seeing him spurred up again despite it having been dulled and nearly gone over the last few weeks. Over shared meals and talks on the bow of the ship of both the childhood they had not forgotten, holding onto it much more closely than they ever used to, and the terrifying truths of the last few years it had seemed to wash away with the current.

Sometimes, Sansa had even grown to trust him enough to tell him about what happened in King’s Landing. Those were rare days, and only when she looked at Theon and thought he was truly capable of being mature enough for it. There were days it seemed to only be jokes surrounding them, and those were not the ones where she could give those parts of herself away. Though, at times they were healing in a different way.

He was still arrogant and nearly a little cruel at times, but he was maybe the only person in the all of Westeros that knew everything she had endured. What another strange twist of fate.

“If they did betray Robb, they knew I was coming for you,” he said. “They would know to look out for us. We need to get moving. Where are all my goddamn men.”

Theon appeared wild as he looked around to spot even one, and the strangest thought took her over. If this was what was going to happen to her, she was glad she had left that castle with him. She would rather be on the run with Theon then stuck in that throne room, despite the dangers that may follow.

That was merely something she had learned as she grew—danger seemed to follow wherever the Starks were. Maybe that was simply the world, though, and it was all dangerous. Either way, there was nothing to do to escape it. Sansa could fight now to get home, and she would if it took everything she had.

“Your men need to return to the Island,” she said, dipping closer so he could hear her but no one else could. He turned to look at her and raised a brow. “If we’re going to be inconspicuous, then we can’t travel with a whole crew of them. No offense, but they stand out.”

“You’re right,” he said. His eyes traveled to her braided back hair. “Why do you have to be so recognizable with your fiery hair. We need to get it covered up.”

She looked down at the dress she had been wearing, unfortunately, for weeks. It had been that or the men’s clothing, and she had thought it better to stick with what she knew. “I suppose a tattered dress that is southern in fashion might not be helpful as well.”

“I best find my men to tell them to sail home with an update of what’s happened. Hopefully if we need help, Yara will have something of a pliable ear though I doubt it,” he said. Then he looked at her, truly looked at her, and it seemed to help her steal herself. “Then, we best find some horses and the lady a new dress. A cloak, perhaps, too.”

If it wasn’t terrifying, the whole situation would almost be humorous. One day when she was home and safe with her family, this all would make one terribly interesting story. Sansa gave a thought to her family, and she gave a thought to the Princess Myrcella who found herself amongst them. She wondered where they were. She wished she could tell them she was safe if just to ease their worry, even if it might not have been strictly true. 

There would be time to think on all of that later. Now, she had to move.


	4. robb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb attempts to enjoy moments of normalcy between war and politics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit shorter than normal, i find robb's pov a little limiting tbh but some events need to be told through his perspective so here we are. next chap will be back to the ladies and big things are a COMIN' !!

“Have you heard?” Robb asked as he sat down beside Myrcella. She seemed a bit startled at the introduction, and he wondered if maybe she had been enjoying the quiet of the morning. There were times he looked at her and sensed she was somewhere else and rather happy to be there, thinking the thoughts she entertained herself with. It felt bad pulling her away. 

“You might have to be a bit more specific I’m afraid,” she said as she tilted her head to the side. “I have heard many things.” 

“Your brother has found himself a new bride,” he said. 

Myrcella’s blonde brows met in the middle. “That certainly was fast. What poor woman is suffering his presence to be queen?” 

“Margaery Tyrell.” 

“Wasn’t that Renly’s bride?” she asked. “It is becoming difficult to handle all the puzzles this war is providing me with.” 

Robb let out a small laugh, still feeling himself work his way to full energy this early in the morning. Riverrun was rather peaceful when the sun was peeking through the sky and the full castle wasn’t aroused just yet. He would miss the comfort when he went back to camp. He would miss this time with Myrcella perhaps most of all, when she was up early and eating at the table or reading in some corner. Sometimes he found her bent over dresses trying to repair them with the materials left behind by other women. 

They wouldn’t be leaving instantly, there were still more plans to be discussed regarding the Tully forces and next steps, but he could feel the days numbering down. When he left, he knew the short sense of calm they had been enjoying would go with it. Maybe it was helpful because then he could at least remember what he was fighting for, but he knew he would miss it in a way that may ache.

“She was, though not for long,” he said. “They say they’re trying to push the wedding through quickly to give the people something positive to focus on. Turns out when the people are starving, the capitol is half in ruins, and the war is not yet won a boost in morale is sorely needed.” 

“Do try to not sound so very excited about that,” Myrcella said with a sigh. “Those are people, after all, whether they’re on the other side or not. They didn’t choose where they were born.” 

“Now you sound like Talisa on the battlefield,” he said. 

Myrcella’s lips thinned into a line, and he was left wondering what he had said wrong. Hadn’t she been the one to say Talisa was a smart, capable woman? He hadn’t thought comparing the two of them would be insulting. They were very different people, but they held similarities in certain areas such as that. They were both trying hard to do good in a way they could, and he found that admirable

“Do you still think of her?” she asked, but it seemed the terseness had evaporated in the air. Instead there was a twinkle of curiosity there instead. “Do you wish she were here?” 

Robb had liked Talisa, still liked her truthfully, and when he thought of her it was like looking at a future he might have had. That didn’t change the fact that Myrcella had been right. He was selfish for wanting something easy, and it had been cruel to think about himself so fully when his sister was suffering. 

She was free now, though, and if he wanted to rekindle that there was still the chance of it. Sure, he would ruin the Frey alliance, but his sister wouldn’t be in danger because of it. Gods, he hoped Sansa and Arya were okay. He thought about Bran who had disappeared from his own volition on a mission he had no concept of. He thought about Rickon alone in Winterfell, probably too young to truly understand what had happened to the once filled home to leave it so empty. 

No, he did not still think on Talisa. He focused on his family and the war in front of him, and in the odd moments he could think of anything else he had started to think of Myrcella. The princess beside him. It had started slowly in a strange way. He would be looking over papers and without warning begin thinking about the delicate curve of her nose, and the way a few sporadic freckles, truly only enough to count on his fingers, had cropped up as she spent more time outside. 

It was like there was something about her that was inescapable. She wasn’t just like sunshine, she  _ was  _ it. Give it even a crack and it flooded on in. He wasn’t sure yet what it all meant, simply that he couldn’t stand the idea of her not being there anymore. It felt like she had become a part of their family as unlikely and strange as that was. 

“No,” he said, but he did not tell her  _ I think of you.  _ It was inappropriate, and he thought it would be safer if he knew exactly what the thought meant before exposing it to her. “I am trying to heed the words of my favorite advisor these days. It’s worked out for me so far.” 

She raised a single brow, the right side of her mouth curving up simultaneously. If she was capable of it, he would say it was a smirk, but there was something too bright about her disposition for any curve of her lips to be called such. 

“I’m your favorite advisor, am I? I don’t recall getting called to any council meetings. If anything, I recall the word  _ stolen  _ being used quite a lot.” 

“One day you will be stolen no more, I promise,” he said. 

He hated that the word still had to exist at all in their story, despite the fact that it seemed most days like she had found her place amongst them. Him and his mother were not her family, though, and she had not chosen them. He had switched all their narratives by his actions, and they had to account for that. 

“How kind.” She rolled her eyes, but it was followed with a delicate laugh. 

Neither of them seemed to know what would happen when that time came. Robb chugged through one day at a time, trying to keep his feet on the ground and as much of his family as he could reach safe. For now, they traded laughs and smiles between discussions of the war around them like currency to be hoarded on rainy days. 

Truthfully, he didn’t much like the idea of her going back to that lion’s den, but it was her  _ home.  _ She was lion through and through, he had to remind himself. Though, he failed to see it on her most of the time. What could he do, though? He had no right to keep her anywhere when they found safety. She could go wherever she wanted, and more than anything he wanted her to have that choice again. 

When the war was won and they found their way home, Robb didn’t want to force a single princess to do anything they didn’t want to do ever again. 

* * *

Before Robb looked up to see who had entered into his room, he could feel the temperature around him shift. It seemed one of those rare and terrifying moments where he could feel the weight of what was about to come, but he could do nothing to stop it. He was frozen in place, about to be buried, and he had to open his eyes to watch it all happen.

“Robb,” Catelyn said, and the tone of her voice made it all the worse. 

In times like these, Robb tried to hold onto the words of his father.  _ You can’t control what will be thrown at you,  _ he would say in that way that always seemed to be fuller, more important than the way others spoke. It would have Robb gripping onto every last word, tucking them away like a squirrel with acorns for later.  _ You can only control how you face it. Be brave, sword ready, son.  _

Robb looked up at his mother—beautiful and tired—though he would rather keep looking over his notes and pretend the words would not come. He straightened his shoulders, head tilted up, and pulled out his metaphorical sword to fight whatever was going to come. 

“It seems the Boltons have taken Winterfell.” 

Whatever Robb had been expecting to come from his mother, those words had not been it. He couldn't begin to fathom how this had happened, how this could be true. “How do we know this?” Robb asked. “Are we sure it’s not some source of war propaganda?”

She shook her head. “Word has come from White Harbor and Barrowton.” 

“Any word officially from the Boltons themselves?” Robb asked. “Any word of Rickon?”

Catelyn shook her head barely, the smallest of movements, and Robb was left wondering what was happening in the quiet, sometimes cold head of his mother’s. How did she possibly keep going? How did she stay by his side while all here children were scattered to the wind? It felt like they were constantly climbing uphill and never getting any closer to it. 

The truth was, Robb had never asked to be a king. He had never asked for a crown. He couldn’t deny that the idea had grown to appeal to him, that he liked wearing that power at least a little in a way that at times scared him. And yet, the real truth of it was he had done this all for his family. He had done this so he could have them all together again and find peace. 

The goal felt so impossibly far away, though. He hadn’t been able to save his father. Even getting Theon out of Winterfell hadn’t saved their home, hadn’t saved his brothers. Bran was in the wilderness while Rickon might be captured by another man Robb did not know despite thinking he had. What a terrible life for a child. For a second, Robb felt his whole body ache at the idea that Rickon might have been too young to properly remember any of them. 

He shut his eyes tight and tried to ignore the desire to cry again. He was supposed to be a young man arguing over which woman to marry and practicing his sword in the yard with his brothers. He was supposed to be learning these skills of ruling little by little, day by day, instead of being dumped into the freezing waters and constantly expected to get it right. 

“We haven’t received any official words,” Catelyn said. “From the word that has come through, though, he hasn’t declared himself King of the North. He’s only claiming true Warden. Why would he go to the trouble of taking the heart of the north if that was all he wanted? Why leave the winning side?”

Robb ran a hand over his beard. “He must be working with the Lannisters, Warden by decree of the crown I’m sure he’s claiming. That could be the only way. If they convinced him to take our home it leaves us divided. Boltons to the North, Lannisters to the South. If we go take back our home we have to leave the land we’ve gained, and if we go South we give up Winterfell. Impossible choices.” 

Catelyn stepped forward, laying her bare palms flat across the table between them. In the candlelight, Robb could see the reflection of flames in her eyes. Some times, he looked at his mother and forgot what she had been before all of this. Here, in front of him, she looked like someone very much on their last leg. 

“It’s Tywin Lannister. He wants to divide you so he can beat you off from both sides. If you have no forces and no stronghold, then he can try to pick us all off one by one.” Catelyn stood back up and walked over to the fire, letting her eyes rest on the flames. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. 

Would they ever be at rest again? 

“What do we do?” Robb asked. He wished for a minute that he could give up all the responsibility, that someone else would give him the answer to all of this. “Give up our home? Give up on Rickon? Gods, we don’t even know if Sansa is safe.” 

“Wait for an official letter,” Catelyn began, face turned away from him. “I may not know Roose Bolton well enough to have predicted this, but I know if he is truly working with the Lannisters and has taken Winterfell, then he’ll let us know. Tywin Lannister may be smart, but he’ll show his hand.” 

Robb paused, and in the space between their words the crackling of the fire and the wind against window panes seemed to pulse through the room. 

“We should sleep,” he said. “We have long days ahead of us.”

The only response he received was a slow nod and his mother's back walking away, shoulders slumped, a soft closing of the door. 

* * *

Robb wanted to lay in bed and not get up. He wanted to let the day pass him—sun up to sun down—without having to think or move or  _ do.  _ That, unfortunately, was not the lot in life allotted to him. It didn’t matter that Roose Bolton had sent a scroll decreeing himself truly the Warden of the North by the grace of the crown. It didn’t matter that he said he had Rickon and, to his shock and surprise, Arya as well.

_ “She’s alive,” Robb had said, barely believing the words.  _

_ “And captured,” Catelyn said with voice hard as rock.  _

He might be the only of his siblings with any true freedom, and Robb couldn’t through away his power or his strength because the weight of all of it felt truly blinding. No, Robb got up. He tried his hardest to find a way out of all of this. He did it again, and again, and again. 

* * *

“You need to eat,” Myrcella said from his doorway.

He hadn’t heard her approach, truth be told, but he had found himself growing more and more intensely focused in as he worked. He had found a way to free one of his sisters only for the other to find herself captured. It was hard to hear the news coming from the North, and he wished he didn’t have to. But he could work and try to figure some way out of this mess and this war. 

“There’s too much to be done,” he said through a groan.

“I’m certain you can do it all so much better when you find yourself faint and malnourished. That's certainly the way to fight battle, isn’t it? Lack of sustenance, lack of sleep. Truly puts you on your best standing.”

Her lips were tilted delicately in a light joke, and he found himself wanting to smile back. Myrcella was like a big glass of well water on a scorching day. He wanted to drink all of her in. Today, she had found herself a light pink dress that was beautiful against her pale skin and flowing blonde hair. She had always been beautiful at camp, but he couldn’t deny that cleaned up she looked something like a dream come true. 

“You make a point,” he said. 

“I’ve been known to do it once or twice,” she replied, stepping into the room and signaling to someone down the hall. 

The next thing he knew, there were dishes laid out for the two of them, and she was sitting across from him. One of the boys of the castle approached to bring in a flagon of wine or water, he wasn’t entirely sure, and paused before dropping a scroll on the table between them, too. 

“This arrived for you, Your Grace,” he said. He set down the flagon and bowed, leaving the room. 

Then it was just Myrcella and Robb. He wanted to reach out for the scroll, unsure by the seal on the front of it, but he didn’t want to be rude to Myrcella. This was too kind, and he was reminded again how she might be one of the most caring people he had ever met. She had grown to care about _him_ , looking after him in a way he most likely did not deserve. 

“This is truly too much,” he said. “You should be doing better things with your time than worrying about me.” 

“Someone needs to,” she said. Her eyes were looking straight at him—wide and sparkling, easy to lose yourself in. The moment felt serious, and Robb thought he could easily lose himself in that, too. “I know you want to read whatever’s on that scroll. Go ahead.”

For a second, his eyes roamed the smooth planes of her face. She was too much—too beautiful, too nice, too smart. Through and through, she was a beyond lovely creature. She seemed like a princess from a song, but perhaps not even that did her justice. Too difficult to understand, an enigma he happily lost himself in. He was starting to sound too poetic, too distracted, and he reached forward for the scroll. 

His eyebrows crashed together, and he narrowed his eyes as he scanned the words. 

“What is it?” she asked, dipping forward, voice dripping with curiosity. 

“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, as if in the spaces between the words he might gather some sort of insight. 

“May I see?” she asked, and he handed it over without complaint. He watched the way she took in the words, and her lips curved up a bit at the end. “Read it to me,” she said. 

“Do you understand what it is? I don’t…” 

“Read it aloud,” she said again, handing it back to him. 

He took the scroll in his hands and cleared his throat. “The maiden made happily for the apple tree, running up the hill and falling to her knee. There she knew the rain would fall, though not as terribly as it had in the great Oak hall.” 

“Do you not recognize it at all?” she asked. “Vocally it might sound something more like a song?” 

“Who would bother to send me lyrics to a song I do not even remember?” 

Myrcella rolled her eyes and took the scroll back from his hands. There was a full smile on her face as she read it over again, bringing a hand up to her lips as if she couldn’t seem to stop the smile and was almost unfamiliar with the feeling of it. A small giggle escaped, and soon she had to wipe a single tear off of her delicate cheek. 

“I am entirely lost,” Robb said, starting to get a little annoyed with the delay. 

Her eyes found his, and he felt a ray of hope burst through this chest. 

“It’s from a song. You might have not known it, I do suppose it was of more intrigue to young girls. The Maiden of the Apple Tree. It was about a girl who escapes a life of turmoil to enter into one with further hardships, but she gladly takes the new path over the old. Eventually, she falls in love with a disguised prince who offers her security. It resolves quite tragically, actually, because they can’t be together and her family comes back for her, kills the prince, and the maiden kills the family in revenge. She returns to the apple tree she would sing to all those hard days of her life and takes her own life, and— wow, I truly cannot believe my septa used to sing this to me as a child. This is horribly dark.” 

“These two lines?” he asked, trying to get her to the point. 

She focused again. “They’re from the spot of the song where she escapes. Can you think of any young women in your life that may have escaped particularly difficult hardships as of late?” 

“Sansa,” he released her name in something of a breath, of a sigh of relief. He felt tears come to his own eyes now, too. With all the difficulties that had been falling around him, he needed to hold onto this real possibility. “She’s safe?” 

“I think so,” she said. “She must have wanted to send you something to let you know but couldn’t write just anything in case it was intercepted. With the Boltons taking over Winterfell and knowing the plans of Theon going to retrieve her, it’s not particularly—”

“Safe,” he finished for her. “If Theon can keep her alive and well, if he can get her back to us I swear I will forgive any of his sins. I need her home, Myrcella.”

She did not point out that his home was taken, but he was pretty sure she knew what he had meant anyways. All the Starks would not be  _ truly  _ home again until they were together. Their home was more than a place, but a feeling of security. A feeling of the pack. 

She reached out a hand across the table. “Nothing worth having comes easy, but we will get it all back. She will be safe. She is smart and quick, that I know for certain.” 

If her words were true and nothing worth having truly did come easy, he thought that was a pretty cruel trick of the world. There should be some things that you didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for. He would like rest, like peace. There had been a time when his life seemed so undeniably easy, but perhaps that was exactly why all the tragedy followed. He would never take all of that for granted again. 

“Now eat,” she continued, seemingly noticing the way he was so quickly pulled into the fog of thought today. “Eat, and you can return to getting your family back and winning your war.”

She cut into her own food, giving him a pointed look over her utensils. If someone else had done it the action may have left him feeling like a child being chastised by their parent, but from her it simply seeped with concern. 

“You should do as I say,” she said. “After all, I continue to save your life. How else would you have deciphered the song?” 

He reached for his utensils, that annoying smile taking over his face unwillingly like it so often did when she teased him. He wondered if she would ever understand, though, the truth of her words. She had saved his life a couple times over already, and he had the distinct feeling it wasn’t over yet. 

* * *

Earlier than he much rather would have liked, Robb had to return to war. He had never left it, really, and even when it was all won and done he had a feeling he would be wearing it forever. His father had done that, and there were days Robb remembered looking at Ned and seeing a far off glint of horror in his eyes. The feeling of death—being close to it, taking it, wearing it—was something Robb thought was inescapable. It wormed its way into you, and it made a home there.

For a short while, though, he had been able to convince himself he was free of it. Tywin’s men were coming from below, though, and he needed to get back to his army and get them moving. If they could survive through this and establish a safety in all their territory, Robb hoped they could spare time to fight back for Winterfell. 

It had been hard to not run right for it. Robb wanted to abandon it all, go get his brother and sister. He needed to be smart though, and not let his pride or feelings get in the way. Take a breath, he was constantly reminding himself, and be smarter than the men who have fallen already. Part of that meant listening to everyone around him so he didn’t fall into his own shortcomings. 

Once upon a time, Robb remembered telling Jaime Lannister that he was smarter than to leave him in the holds of any of his men. For the longest time he had kept that promise still with Myrcella. She was the princess after all, and she had more clout than even Jaime had. What would Cersei do to get her darling daughter back? What would Joffrey do to reclaim his pride from all those girls stolen from right underneath his nose?

Now, though, with his men going to fight war not far from camp and the unpredictability with what would happen next… he needed Myrcella and Catelyn to stay here. He hadn’t told his mother that. He had intended, in full honestly, to sneak out rather undetected. It wouldn’t hold her away forever, but he needed them here safe and alive just in case…

Well, Winterfell had to be taken back. Rickon and Arya had to be taken back. Sansa needed to be safe, and Robb could not do that if he died in battle. Even if he was dead, he needed to know he was setting everyone else up for the best odds. 

Despite the fact that the sun hadn’t even risen yet, and that Robb had only told his small crew of men who were going with him, Myrcella was standing in the yard before he walked out. The horses were waiting and ready, and she stood in her pink dress again, though with a cloak to fight the morning chill. 

“You should be in bed, Princess,” he said as he stepped closer. “There is no reason to see me off.” 

She looked still dazed in sleep, and she scrunched her nose up as a rush of wind brushed past. It was sort of adorable. Her head tilted to the side, her blonde hair rushing over her shoulder. 

“You didn’t tell me you were going,” she said. “You didn’t tell me I was staying here, and you were most certainly trying to sneak out before I would know.” 

“I thought it would be better without a goodbye,” he said, feeling the guilt take him over. 

Maybe it had been selfish more than anything. Easier if he didn’t have to tell the two closest women in his life as of late that he was leaving and may not return. He didn’t know why it felt more final this time, like something really could go wrong. Usually, he had the bravery of the young wolf leading his people. Lately, though, he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that the horrors were catching up to him. 

Somehow, he had managed to escape death and tragedy by luck. He needed to keep his face, though, and keep his faith. If he decided the war was done then it would be, and he needed to fight for his family and the future he hoped to have. It wouldn't be the future he had intended when he was younger, but he had come to realize that having a future at all was a privilege he should not throw away lightly.

She shook her head, stepping closer to him. The other men were readying themselves on their horses and grumbling about things Robb could not hear nor care about. It was impossible to be focused on anything besides Myrcella in front of him. He needed to hold onto this picture of beauty as assistance to get him through. There wouldn’t be a lot of pretty in the near future. 

“It’s never better without a goodbye,” she whispered. “Please come back,” she said, and she reached and wrapped her fingers around his wrists to hold them. It seemed as if a great step for her to do so. 

Robb wanted to hug her like he could easily his mother or sisters. He wanted to be able to reach out to her, let her know her impact without it being improper. What was the point for feeling anything for this woman in front of him, though? He had an intended, and Myrcella was the one all those months ago to scold him for flirting with Talisa. 

There would come a day where she would go home, and he would most likely never see her again. He didn’t know how to hold that. 

“I can’t make promises I’m not positive I can keep,” he said, but he dipped forward and reached out a hand to hold her upper arm. He really needed to go, but he desperately wanted this moment to never end. “I can try my hardest.” 

“Remember your sisters and your brothers. Remember Winterfell and your mother. If it will help you at all, remember me,” she said. Her head was tilted up defiantly as if she was giving him an order, trying to look more powerful than she may have felt. “Remember what you still have to fight for beyond your life.”

“A King’s work is never done,” he said with a sad smile. “Please don’t get captured by someone else while I’m gone, aye?”

She tilted her head. “I can try my hardest,” she said in a copy of his words. 

It felt like they both wanted to dip closer, to break the space between them, but there was nothing to be done. Decorum sat desperately between them, appearances and family history as well. Would there ever be a moment they could break through all that held them apart. 

“Once we have a camp settled and the next steps are clear, I’ll send for both you and my mother.” 

Myrcella nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. 

There were no more words to be spoken between them. They both reached for more, but it was clear it was time to go. Feeling brave, perhaps a little rebellious and mad at the world, he broke the space between them and left a kiss on the crown of her head. It was far too intimate, but the horse by his side cut them off from other eyes he hoped. 

If he was going to die, he felt he deserved to do this once. 

“Okay,” she whispered again, her eyes closed. Her eyelashes laid so delicately on her pale skin. He could count the freckles that had sporadically spotted up on her cheeks—one on the center of the bridge of her nose, one to the right of it, another near the apple of her cheek. What did her okay mean? He couldn’t begin to untangle it. 

When he stepped back the connection broke, and she snapped her eyes open. He hopped up onto his horse, waving his men on, and he began his next journey. Before leaving the walls entirely, he gave one last look over his shoulder. 

She stood there, like a pink dream in the middle of a gray landscape, waving a small, pale, delicate palm for him. 

* * *

The fighting was rough. Blood, death, decay. He watched Lord Karstark fall by his side from a slash straight to his throat, words dying on his lips Robb would never know. Only nights earlier he had talked about his daughter who he had not seen in so long.  _ Can’t wait to see this bleeding war over just to see her smiling face again. Almost full grown by now, I have to imagine.  _ Robb  tried not to think about taking him from his home and unknowingly sentencing him to never see her again. That was war; he had been taught it since he first could understand a word.

There was nothing like death to make a man more serious, to even fight harder for their own life. Robb watched men fall, so many men, and he killed just as many back. He won, as he had done before, but he realized that the more he won the less joy he was taking from it. 

He remembered Myrcella telling him not to be so happy about all those starving people in King’s Landing.  _ They didn’t choose where to be born _ , she had said. He thought about Talisa, mending men on both sides of the war. When would the slaughtering end, he wondered. 

He woke again. He fought some more. He kept going because it was what his father had told him.  _ If you’re going to fight, you better win.  _

* * *

Lord Umber, large and imposing, stood to Robb’s right. He clapped a hand on Robb’s shoulder, though he had no idea what could be so exciting. He had thundered into the tent where they were to meet for council, and when he saw Robb he had come straight to his side with a boisterous sort of swagger.

“What is it, Lord Umber?” Robb asked, quirking a brow upward. 

“Great news, Your Grace,” he said, his lips turning into a sickly sort of smirk. One filled with satisfaction. “That cunt, the bastard king Joffrey Baratheon. He’s dead.” 

Robb froze, turning his full attention toward Lord Umber. He could hear cheers coming from outside the tent as men must have heard the news. “Are we sure?” Robb asked. “How did this happen?” 

“His own fucking wedding. They think it might be the imp, but all I’ve heard is he swallowed a glass of wine and choked on his own spit. Wheezing and purple, they say. Talk about getting what he fucking deserves. I hope it was painful.” 

“He’s dead,” Robb repeated, wrapping his head around the words. It didn’t change everything, there was still Tywin and Cersei Lannister to deal with. There was still the crown, but without Joffrey on the throne… 

Robb thought about the conversation Myrcella and him had about Tommen and how she wished he had been on the throne. Now he would be, and he wondered how much it would change. Stannis was still the rightful heir, but at this point all Robb wanted was their independence. 

He wanted to be declared free, without Lannister armies at his back, and go get his home. 

“Joffrey Baratheon is dead,” he repeated, wrapping his head around it. For a moment he felt bad, for as cruel as he was he was still Myrcella’s brother. Had she heard the news yet? Would she be happy or sad or a terrifying mixture of both? Then he thought about all the things he was sure he had done to both princesses. Robb reached for wine. “I’ll drink to that.” 


	5. two princesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Theon continue to travel to the Starks. Myrcella waits in Riverrun while a new visitor changes everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're back to duel princess pov! this ones goes pretty 50/50, so you can skim sansa parts if that ain't your jam. hope you enjoy!

Myrcella thought at some point maybe she would grow accustomed to the waiting. Her Septa had taught her early that waiting was a woman’s duty. For men to return from war, for men to give them the time of day, anything to fill the endless hours. The Septa never would have said it like that, exactly, but Myrcella knew the truth to her situation.

She was a princess, and she would never have to want for a single thing. It was a lucky situation, and there were times she felt guilty for the amount of surplus she had always existed in when so many went without. But with all that surplus came empty hours waiting to be filled—walking, needlework, perhaps a song.

With Robb gone, the hours seemed to stretch for days.

Catelyn found her less than she had used to, though there were nights she would come and brush her hair or share dinner. There was more silence now, and Myrcella could tell Catelyn took it hard waiting here without getting an input, without being by Robb’s side. It was the first time she was truly without her children, not a single one in sight, and Myrcella knew that must weigh her down.

When she couldn’t find a book to whittle away her time or a task to mind herself with, sometimes Myrcella sat and thought about Winterfell the way Robb would attempt to describe it to her. He wasn’t much for stories, but it wasn’t the wording that enraptured her anyways. It was the feeling, the deep and obvious love of a place and the life he had there.

There were days she would stare out the window, thinking on what their family had looked like. Besides for Sansa, Catelyn and Robb, Myrcella hadn’t spent much time with any of the other Starks. She had to piece together their lives and the way they looked with her own imagination.

Some days, she lost herself in the thought of what it would have been like to grow up there. If Joffrey hadn’t known he was going to be king from the day he was born, given every single thing his heart desired, would he have been built cruel? No matter how she swung it, though it seemed, Joffrey was a monster. He would become it, no matter what she changed.

There was the possibility for something kinder, though. Maybe if they weren’t the king’s children, if they had grown up in Casterly Rock, Myrcella would have known Jaime, her true father, better. Maybe her and Tommen could have been happier without the public eyes on them. Or maybe they were always casted for tragedy and struggle. Maybe there would never be an escape.

The door clattered open, and Myrcella jolted up. She was sitting by the window, staring out at the water and far off landscape. When she saw it was Catelyn at the door, she stood up and nodded politely. Her face looked uncertain, and Myrcella felt a sort of coldness take her over.

There was a feeling in the air as if something bad was going to happen, as if it would shift things, and Myrcella had felt it a few times but she was worried what it meant here. Catelyn was typically a serious woman, but she had grown warmer with their time spent together.

“I apologize for the interruption,” Catelyn said, though she didn’t sound a bit sorry. Her voice simply sounded glum. Perhaps a bit tired.

“There’s no need for such an apology,” Myrcella said with a polite smile. It felt like a wall was standing between them. “I was simply daydreaming, searching for something to pass the time.”

“The waiting never gets easier I’m afraid,” Catelyn said. Then, she motioned to a chair across from her and sat. They were at the corner of the table, right on the edge, and Myrcella followed suit. “I have news for you that I thought you might want to hear from me personally.”

Myrcella felt her heartbeat quicken. Clasping her hands on her lap, she thought about all the courtesy lessons she had learned through her youth. She kept her face even, open, and leaned delicately forward. “What has happened?”

“There’s been word from King’s Landing.” Catelyn shuffled. Her eyes darted anywhere around the room but Myrcella. There was something else besides discomfort, though. Myrcella couldn’t seem to name it. “Your brother is dead.”

“My brother?” Myrcella asked, voice pitched high. A vision of Tommen played in her head. Beautiful, young Tommen who had done nothing but be sweet and light in this heavy world.

“Joffrey,” Catelyn corrected quickly. “I should have been specific. I’m sorry.”

She let out a breath and then felt guilty for it. “How did it happen?”

Catelyn nodded, as if expecting the question and having prepared for it. “As I’ve heard it happened at his wedding. They had pushed it earlier after Sansa disappeared and the Blackwater. They say it was poison. They’re holding your uncle as a suspect.”

“Uncle Tyrion?” Myrcella asked, eyebrows crashing together. “He hated Joffrey, but he isn't stupid. He never would have done it.”

“I’m not the one who needs convincing.” Catelyn looked past Myrcella, perhaps out the window. Was she thinking about Robb? Was she thinking about the way a dead king changed the game they played? “I don’t think Tyrion did it either.”

Myrcella had thought about Joffrey dead before. She had contemplated the way her life may be easier if he was gone. Even, she had contemplated how the Seven Kingdoms may have been ruled kinder and smarter with someone else at the helm of it. Though, death was such an abstract term when you thought about it from afar.

It had become realer since her time at Robb’s camp. She had learned men’s names that died—bleeding out and alone—on a battlefield far away. She had seen the way war marred men both physically and something else that was hard to name, something dark that chipped away at them. There were many ways to break someone, to kill them.

Now, though, as she thought about her brother dead and the way Cersei would be crushed, she found it in her heart to feel sadness. It was still her family, no matter what he had done. Her mother would be beyond devastated, and that left Myrcella feeling sort of empty. It also made her scared.

What would she be capable of now—without a daughter, without a son? How would she sink her claws into Tommen? The thought of her younger brother alone in the capitol, alone on the throne, struck her harder. She should be there for him. Her heart felt wrapped up in itself, unsure how to untangle.

“Would you mind if I had a moment alone?” Myrcella asked, eyes glassing over on their own accord. This was not strength. She did not want the king’s mother to see her and think her weak.

“Of course,” Catelyn said as she stood. Her feet clacked against the floor, and she stopped for a moment by the door.

Myrcella thought she saw her shoulders lower, thought she might turn around to say something, but then she left in a final sweep of the room and Myrcella was unbearably alone.

* * *

In the water of the stream, Sansa could tell she looked like herself but not herself. Her hair had been darkened, and it was covered with a hood when they were not alone in the woods or thought there was a low chance of someone coming. They had to be careful, though, because there was always the chance of there being eyes somewhere they did not expect.

“It would be smarter to take you to your Aunt,” Theon said beside her, dipping closer to the water. He pooled some in his palms and brought it up to his face. As he rinsed in the water briefly, letting the dampness stay on his skin as he reveled in it—somewhat like a fish finally back in water—she had the inescapable thought that he was handsome.

Sansa shifted back to her feet, unwilling to dwell on that thought longer than she had to. This was the man that had put her family at risk. Perhaps, if he had not taken Winterfell first the Boltons would have never thought to. Just because he had done something good did not equate his forgiveness, and he hadn’t been good for good’s sake anyways.

“I don’t want to go to my Aunt Lysa,” Sansa said. It was an old argument at this point, one they had hashed over time and time again. At some point, she was pretty sure they had started having it only for the sake of having something to say. If they argued, it kept them awake and lively. It kept them moving forward. “I want to go to Robb and mother.”

“We can’t be sure they’re still at Riverrun,” Theon said as he followed behind her.

They walked closer to their horses, and she stopped to pet the mane of hers. While she had never much enjoyed riding when she was younger—too messy, too wild—it had felt thrilling to get on a horse again. The ultimate freedom of knowing you could rush off into the distance and not be stopped. She hadn’t even minded when her hair fell from her haphazard braid because the feeling of it whipping behind her, like some wild princess on the run, was exhilarating.

She _was_ a wild princess on the run, she thought. Though, maybe not all that wild. Sansa had never identified much with her Aunt Lyanna from the stories her father would tell, but she supposed in that moment she felt near a kindred spirit to her poor aunt.

“I don’t want to waste time riding all the way to Riverrun simply to turn around.”

“Oh what a burden that will be for you,” she replied as she pushed up onto her horse. She hated the cheap fabric that scratched at her skin. It wasn’t flattering the way her gowns at court were, and she knew she shouldn't care but a small part of her did. The dresses had always sort of felt like her own armor.

She would think about Robb suiting up for battle, and she would tie herself into a fine dress. If she was smarter, maybe she would have realized beauty could be a disadvantage when you already had a target on your back. Or perhaps she should have used it more like a weapon, too, but that made her think of Cersei talking about the _weapon between your legs,_ and it unsettled her.

“I don’t want to go to Aunt Lysa,” she said again. Any place that wasn’t with her direct family felt risky, as if she might end up trapped somewhere else. “Littlefinger is there, and it wouldn’t be safe.”

“I hadn’t heard he married your aunt,” he said. Their horses made their way away from the stream toward the road. “Didn’t you say he was in love with your mother, though?”

“He _is_ ,” Sansa said with a tightness creeping up her throat. There had been times she could have sworn, with the way he looked at her, that something else sat in his heart, too. While in King’s Landing there were few friends and Sansa had to find allies where she could, but now that she was away from the confines of the city she did not like to think on returning to the clutches of Baelish. “We need to go to Riverrun. Robb told you to bring me to him, did he not? Not my aunt, _him._ Wouldn’t you hate to break your promise?”

It was a low blow, perhaps. She could sense Theon close himself off on the horse beside her. He _had_ done that, though. He had betrayed Robb, had taken Winterfell. Though it had seemed to matter less to her as they travelled on, it was hard not to hold it as a reminder in the back of her mind. Being too quick to trust had been a weakness of hers before. She was trying to be smarter than she had as to not fall into the same traps.

Though, when she looked at Theon now, bobbing up and down on the horse, he didn’t look like the boy she had grown up with or the man who had taken her home. He looked like someone new. If Sansa was someone new, maybe he could be, too.

“We go to Riverrun,” he said with a nod.

Sansa almost went to thank him, but she kept her mouth shut. There was nothing to thank, and they kept riding on.

* * *

They stayed the night in a barn on a small property. The owners had thought them to be a newlywed couple on their journey home.

“If only we could do something more for you,” the husband had said, “but it’s warm out there, and we can spare some soup.”

Now fed, they laid on opposite sides of a pile of hay. Sansa missed her bed, and she thought about all the days from now when they would have Winterfell back and she would get to wake up in it again. What she would do for simply one more morning, one more _hour,_ of the life she used to live. Certainly, she would never take it for granted again.

She thought about that letter she had sent what felt like ages ago now, thought about the words she had chosen, and hoped that Robb had understood what she was saying. It had been one of Septa’s favorite songs and stories, though only when she was heavy in her cups and feeling rather romantic. Sansa always liked the stories that came then—they felt more real, more holdable somehow.

A tear came to her eyes thinking of her poor Septa. There were too many ghosts, and she was scared she would never be able to escape them again.

“Do you truly hate me?” Theon asked.

Sansa couldn’t see his face, though she could see the back of his head. In the dim lighting the moon offered them through the singular window, it was nothing more than a grainy image. His voice was odd, and she wished she could see his face to help fit in the pieces she couldn’t seem to understand.

The harder truth was that she didn’t hate him anymore, but she felt like it was a betrayal to Robb. Since she had been forced to send that first letter to her brother, it had been a thought constantly on her mind. She had betrayed them all by thinking she loved Joffrey. She had asked him to come bend the knee. Sansa didn’t want to do another thing to hurt her brother or her family again.

But she did not hate Theon, hadn’t since those nights on his ship. When she looked at him, despite his japes and sarcasm, she sometimes dared to think he was doing this now because he cared about her. Every once in a while, she would catch his gaze on her face, and it seemed like he was looking at his salvation. Though, perhaps that had more to do with getting in Robb’s good graces than anything of her own doing.

“No,” she answered into the darkness because it felt safe. She shifted on her back, trying to make out the grains of wood on the ceiling of the barn. “In King’s Landing it felt like everything was about hate. Joffrey and Cersei wanted to rule through hate. The advisors and men manipulated because of hate, vengeance, whatever horrible thing they sought. I am exhausted from it.”

“You talk about cruelty so casually now.” His voice sounded younger. Perhaps more open. “I hate to think about all the things you haven’t dared to tell me. I know I am not good. I never have been, especially not the way your brother is, but I hope you know you are.”

She bit her bottom lip tightly between her teeth, hoping to keep herself from breaking out into a sob. It was as if he had looked deep into her and pulled out that seed of darkness that felt as if it was growing within her constantly. Her biggest fear was that after all the time she had spent around such hatred it had planted itself right inside. One day she would look in a mirror and see Cersei staring back at her.

 _I have been swallowed whole,_ she thought. _All of them swallowed me, spitting me out and passing me around before swallowing me again._ Sansa wanted to be strong and free. She wanted to escape the touch they had all seemed to leave on her. She wanted, no, _needed_ to be good. How could he have possibly known?

“I would rather be here in this barn, on a pile of rotting hay and in a truly horrendous dress, than be where I had been,” Sansa said. “All the gold in the world wouldn’t be able to cover the dirt underneath.”

He turned on his side, though she couldn’t see it very well. She could hear his sounds of readjusting, then the near silence settled again.

“I will get you to Robb if it kills me,” he whispered.

She couldn’t see his face, but she imagined it on the back of her eyelids. Furrowed brow, eyes you could walk into, a vulnerability she had never known him to wear openly until he came to steal her home again. The hairs on the back of her neck stood erect. “Let’s hope it does not come to that.”

* * *

Tonight, Catelyn came to brush Myrcella’s hair though they had not done it in so very long. Myrcella got the sense that Catelyn had been avoiding her since telling her about Joffrey and the days that followed. It had felt like nothing more than a blink of an eye that Catelyn had needed to come speak to her again.

“Your grandfather has been murdered,” she had said. “Tywin is dead.”

Myrcella had never been close to her grandfather, but he had seemed like an immortal to her. All the wars and battles he had survived. The toughness of his skin, almost as if it were steal. No, Tywin would survive until the last of them were dead and buried.

“How?” she asked. And then she wished she hadn’t because days before they had agreed Tyrion would not kill Joffrey. But it turned out, he would willingly kill his father.

There had been a deep sort of sadness she found herself cradled within since that news had come to her. It was hard to displace ideas you had held forever, and it was like looking at her family in a whole new light. The Starks had been torn apart from the world, but the Lannisters seemed to be torn apart from within.

She was sad she wasn’t with her mother. Myrcella knew she must be devastated without her golden boy or the father she had looked up to, always begged for attention from. Cersei was smart and quick, but she needed to prove it too much, Myrcella had thought. The thoughts were pulling her down to the bottom of an encompassing body of water until Myrcella could not see the shimmering surface no matter how she strained for it. The world was becoming more difficult to manage.

Now, though, Catelyn brushed through her hair with even strokes.

“What is your brother like?” Catelyn asked. “Tommen. Will he make a good king?”

Myrcella felt every stretch of her body constrict. The transition into the words hadn’t felt smooth, not the way their conversations often flowed. It was impossible to ignore a certain level of courtesies that sheltered all their interactions, but they still seemed to retain a sense of connection between them. There was a stiffness in her words that Myrcella couldn’t ignore.

“Is that all I’ve meant to you the whole time?” she asked without an ability to hold it back. This wasn’t smart, but she couldn’t help it. In the mirror, Myrcella watched Catelyn take a step back as if she had been physically hit with the sentiment. She could tell the older woman was still grasping at what the situation had turned into. “Since the day I was stolen from a caravan by your son’s men, has every interaction merely been some way to squeeze information from me? You attempt to give me comfort, feel like a person, make me calm in hopes that I’ll release secrets to you?”

Myrcella could feel a wetness building in her eyes, and she did not want it. For once, she didn’t want to be the good, soft princess she was known as. She wanted to rage. She wished she was someone stronger like her mother or someone fiercer like the woman who stood behind her. Even with a sense of betrayal hanging over her shoulders, Myrcella could respect that.

What was worse, was that Catelyn’s lips were pursed and Myrcella wanted her to yell back at her. She wanted to feel _alive_ instead of the emptiness that filled her life and started to feel as if it was filling her, too. What was left of the girl she thought she was?

“I betrayed my family,” Myrcella said. “I’ve thought about it others ways, but that is what I’ve done, isn’t it? I did it for you. I have lost every sense of the life I have known at the hands of your son and family, yet I still tried to help him. I continue to because I see something good in him, but for what? To still be manipulated? Is that all I’m good for to you, Lady Catelyn?”

By the end of the last word, Myrcella was hoping to feel filled with the power. Instead, it merely felt as if the emptiness was creeping back again. It started at her feet, strange and heavy, and it got lighter as it floated through her limbs. Her chest was heaving, and with each breath she felt her body grow numb.

“I have always just needed some truth,” Catelyn said finally. Myrcella wasn’t sure how long the silence had fallen over them. “You seemed good enough to give it to me.”

“My family is dying off like flies,” Myrcella said, her voice growing thin, “and I am nowhere in sight to see it. I am not entirely sure if I want to be, and that somehow feels worse.”

Catelyn stepped forward, and for a moment Myrcella was worried about what was to come next, but then she was being swept into the older woman’s arms. She stood up from the seat she had been in, and felt arms tighten around her.

A cry came, unbidden and unwanted, but Myrcella wrapped her arms back around Catelyn’s form. Myrcella was tired, and she missed purpose, a sense of knowing what was ahead of her instead of the ambiguity being a captive held.

“You do not deserve this,” Catelyn whispered, and it only seemed to make Myrcella cry harder.

* * *

The two of them were doing odd work near the hearth when there was commotion from outside. Myrcella saw Catelyn perk up, and she couldn’t help to feel curiosity as well. They made eye contact over their work, and they seemed to think it at the same time.

 _Maybe it is Sansa._ There was an energy in a room with the idea, and the two of them pushed to their feet. They had spent more time together since that night, since Myrcella fell apart in front of her. There was a closeness there now that Myrcella held more tightly than she had before. It amplified her desire for them to make it to the front of the castle and there Sansa would be.

Her hair would be muddied and her dress torn, but she would be just as beautiful. Her smile would be wide, and her and her mother would run to each other through the courtyard without a care in the world. It wouldn’t matter if they were being proper or ladylike because they would be _happy._

As they got closer to the front courtyard, Myrcella felt their pace quicken. Catelyn was nearly at a jog, and when they burst into the light the both of them stopped without warning. Myrcella saw a gruff man at first, trying to place it before remembering it was the Hound. What in the hell was _he_ doing here?

Then her eyes shifted and beside him was a girl, short and in boy clothes.

“Arya,” Catelyn breathed out.

Myrcella turned to see her face—eyes wide, mouth agape. It was pure and total shock.

Just as she had predicted when she thought it was her older daughter, Catelyn was running across the courtyard and Arya did it right back. The younger girl seemed to nearly leap into her mother’s arms, and Myrcella felt a tear drip down her cheek as she watched. Quickly, she wiped it away.

There were eyes on her, and she looked up to see the Hound giving her a curious look. Myrcella was fairly sure they had never had an actual conversation before, but she had sat a chair or two away from him plenty of times. As Catelyn and Arya continued to whisper things back and forth to one another, enjoying a moment that was so filled with love it struck Myrcella’s heart like lightning, she walked over to the man.

“I hadn’t heard you were no longer protecting my brother, though I suppose that would be quite difficult considering recent developments,” Myrcella said.

The Hound grunted as she stood beside him. They both eyed Catelyn and Arya who were pulling apart now.

“I got the fuck out of there,” he said. “I tried to get that other Stark Princess out of the castle when I left, but what would you know someone else got her before me. Found this one in the middle of the woods somewhere.”

Myrcella had found herself a little nervous around the Hound when she was younger. He seemed so hulking, and the scar on his face did nothing to help the image of brutality he chose to wear. Here, though, offering back a little girl to her mother, Myrcella couldn’t help but think he might have the tiniest bits of heart.

“I assume you’re seeking some compensation?” Catelyn asked as she approached, raising a brow.

“I didn’t risk my neck for free, if that's what you’re asking,” he replied, but when he looked at Arya Myrcella was pretty sure she could see more than a desire for gold.

“You are welcome here to rest, and we can get you settled.” Catelyn nodded.

“Wait,” Myrcella said, the events finally catching up to her. She looked at Arya in her scraggly clothes and hacked hair. “If you’re here, then who is Roose Bolton claiming to be you?”

Catelyn met her eyes, and they seemed to be thinking about that scroll they had received from the _true warden of the north_ back when Winterfell had first been taken. If he was lying about Arya, was he lying about Rickon? What was the advantage to claiming he had Arya if he did not?

“Where’s Robb?” Arya asked, not seeming to understand the importance of what Myrcella was asking. How could she.

“Fighting,” Catelyn said as she tucked her daughter underneath her arm. “He will be so happy to see you upon his return. Let us go get you cleaned and fed.”

Myrcella followed them back into the castle, mind racing.

* * *

While Sansa enjoyed the freedom of riding horses, it did little to dull the nothing of long stretches of day. There was time she was more than happy to enjoy that silence after it had been difficult to find in King’s Landing. Other times, she was glad Theon was far from difficult to make talk. If he didn’t feel like it, all she really had to do was engage him in an argument and it would give her entertainment for periods of time.

“Do you really want to rule the Iron Islands?” Sansa asked.

It was hard to think about much else besides for her family when they were getting so very close to Riverrun, but the thought had taken her over a few days prior. While Theon spoke of his home and their customs during childhood, Sansa wasn’t entirely sure she had ever thought about him actually returning and leading. He had certainly acted like he was meant to be a king, as if he held some superior secret about the world the rest of them couldn’t possibly know, but it had never seemed much like a reality in all truth.

Though, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about Theon Greyjoy in those days. There were more important things to be done. Now, though, with endless road and nothing but her mind to keep her company, Sansa thought of him far too often.

“It’s my birthright,” he said.

She turned to watch him on the horse. It was hard to tell whether he was looking forward merely to keep himself steady riding or because he was avoiding her.

“I’m afraid that's not quite an answer.” She had been with him too long. Every day she felt bolder, a little more capable of pushing the boundaries of what she was allowed.

“What does it matter to you?” he asked. Finally, he turned to meet her gaze and there was a sharpness to his features. It was times like these she could see the Iron Island of him. He slapped back like a harsh wave, slashing and retreating. It could be sort of relentless. “You would never understand.”

Without thinking about it, she had rolled her eyes. “People never think I’ll understand a single thing. When will people stop thinking I’m an absolute dolt of a girl.”

He grunted, and the sound didn't seem out of place but it was unfamiliar coming from him. “I don’t think you’re a _dolt_.” He couldn’t seem to say the word without laughing at least a little. “Pyke doesn’t feel like it’s home, and I’m not sure it ever would,” he admitted. “What other choices do I have? What purpose do I serve?”

“Are you not serving me?” she asked. His head whipped toward her, shock coating his features. “Not me, exactly,” she corrected. “But you’ve saved me, haven’t you? You came and got me. You’re taking me home. It didn’t start with the best intentions, but that's been amended, hasn’t it?”

“I did it for Robb,” he said. “Even after betraying him, all I wanted was to take it back so I could go back to having him by my side. Or me by his side, I suppose. I couldn’t stop feeling angry at him, though, as if he was still treating me like a child while he was a king. Now, with you, though…”

“With me, what, _Lord Greyjoy_?” she asked, a curious tilt to her lips as she used the title. It was so odd to think about him in those terms, and she could sense even he could feel the ridiculousness of that.

“I thought without Robb by my side I wasn’t good anymore,” he said. “That Robb had merely rubbed it off on me, and I was holding it together by the seams because of him. With you, though, I feel as if I could try. That maybe I could build it in me instead of stealing it off of someone else’s back.”

It almost seemed as if he was daring himself to say _you make me want to better._ Sansa had never contemplated herself being someone worth inspiring that, but it had been her wish when she was stuck in the trials of King’s Landing. She hoped if she was to rule, if she really was to be queen, she could make the people love her. Not because she _needed_ that love, but because she knew true terror and she was tired of all those people being ruled with hate.

There was a boldness at what she had implied to Theon, but it seemed he had returned with it, too. On the road, it felt easy for them to speak back and forth like this. She had begun to forget there was an after, though this conversation certainly brought it to the surface. Theon was to go back to the Iron Islands and his family. Sansa would be expected to return to the perfect lady.

The two of them had walked into a relationship, one she couldn’t quite define since it didn’t seem to fit the molds of any she knew—friendship, family, an odd sense of care and duty—and it was too obvious they would not be able to walk out of this. They were shaded with this connection now, and Sansa would think about this time for the rest of her life. It was something that shaped her story, not merely a story of its own.

“You could stay,” she said. Did she care for Theon Greyjoy because of who he was or because he was the first person she had felt like she could be herself with again? It was hard to know if the feeling of relative safety had washed over her and shifted her view on this man. She missed when life was simpler. “You could fight at Robb’s side again. I’d speak for you, you know.”

“I’m not entirely certain I deserve it,” he said. “I’m not sure what I want, or who I want to be anymore. Stark, Greyjoy, it almost feels an impossible choice.”

Sansa shrugged, looking back forward at the road because staring at Theon’s profile was beginning to become too difficult. She needed to remind herself of the road ahead, of how close they were. _Days_ away. “Who ever said you had to choose.”

* * *

The fire warmed her, though Sansa would have been happy to keep going truthfully.

“The horses need to rest,” Theon had told her.

“The closer we get, the harder it gets to stop,” she replied. “We are almost there.”

“Tomorrow, Princess,” he replied with a small smile. “We will get there tomorrow.”

So now they sat at the fire after sharing a fairly measly dinner, but tomorrow they would be at Riverrun. Sansa would see her brother and her mother. She would run to them, hold them so tightly she feared she would stop breathing. They would stay in contact for hours, as if Sansa was afraid letting them go would make the dream disappear and she would wake up back in King’s Landing.

Sansa would even be happy to see the Princess Myrcella. The two of them could talk about what they had endured, swapping stories and perhaps forming something of a friendship. Or perhaps not, but Sansa would try to be kinder to this girl now that she understood they shared something little else in this world knew.

She thought about a full belly and a warm bed and a clean dress. Oh, how she would love to wash the strange dye out of her hair and have her full red locks again. She eyed Theon across the circle from her as tired and weary as she felt, too. If he did disappear back to the Iron Islands, she wasn’t sure she knew what to do with the fondness that began to sit within her. It was hard to imagine how he would fit back into the folds of everything, but Sansa thought maybe she could help.

After so long being told she was nothing but a bird in a cage, she wanted to help end this wartime. She wanted to help them take back Winterfell, wanted to get their home safe and full again. Sansa thought about seeing Rickon and Bran and Arya. Gods, maybe they could hope to be a proper family again when this was all over.

Sansa saw Theon prick up to attention before she began to hear it, too. There was the far off sound of horse hoofs, and the closer sound of the twigs breaking.

“Get your things,” Theon said with a hushed voice, pouring water over the fire and spilling themself into the darkness. “Quick, now.”

She didn’t have much, but she grabbed her fraying skirts and moved to her horse quickly. The sounds were growing, and instead of terror she thought she might feel instead it was _anger._ There was fire sitting within her, and she wanted to revolt against anyone who dared cross her.

Maybe this was nothing, and they were being over paranoid. But Sansa knew that you couldn’t simply hope for the best, anymore. No, you had to _fight_ for the best. You had to be smarter than everyone around you.

Theon appeared beside her and grabbed her waist to help hoist her up onto the horse. He looked up at her, and in that moment he looked something desperate. He looked almost wrecked like a man lost at sea, like he was about to turn toward the waves and let them swallow him whole.

It was strange how Theon still somehow smelled like the ocean this far from it, how salt sat in his veins even now. Sansa never would have dared to think it before, but now it felt important to hold onto. Now, though, he looked like a clump of sea foam that might fall apart at the touch and disappear into nothing.

“You have to go,” he said in a hurried whisper.

She bent forward, her dark hair cascading over her shoulder. “ _We_ have to go. Get up on your horse, Theon. I will not have it.”

He shook his head, hand already clenching around his bow. “I said I would die to get you home. Let me fight for you, Princess Sansa.” This time when he said her title, it was nothing but respect.

“I will have no more stupid men die at the hands of honor when they don’t need to,” she hissed back. She reached a hand out, that boldness rippling through her again, and she grasped at his face. “Please, Theon.”

He gulped, and maybe Theon had never been as good of a liar as she thought he was. His eyes dipped to the side, and for the briefest moment he pushed his face into her touch. Then he pulled back. “I will be right behind you. Don’t look back, though.” He hit the back of her horse, and it jolted forward with a neigh.

When she turned to see him over her shoulder, the bow was up and already whizzing arrows. She pushed forward with the horse, feeling herself break and build back together over and over again. She could do this without him. She would if she needed to, but she didn’t _want_ to.

They had been so close, and she didn’t want him to die now in the middle of the woods to nameless men. Her heart was torn impossibly between things she couldn’t hope to name. For now, though, she kept the horse pulsing forward as quick as she could manage in the darkness.

The horse bucked up, and she held as hard as she could to not slip past. Her thighs ached with the strength of it. Then, she heard something from the right. How stupid it would be if she was captured again, here, so close to home. Though she had found little use for the Gods since she watched her father’s head cut from his body, she prayed to them now.

* * *

While Myrcella was more than happy to have Arya integrated into the folds of the castle, she couldn’t deny it shifted the dynamics and the day to day. It was strange to know a daughter that had been long gone, that Catelyn had almost thought of as dead, was walking back around the halls. The first day they had tried to fit Arya into a dress, and she had come out wearing pants stolen from somewhere else in the castle.

Catelyn had simply been so happy to see her at all, she had easily let it slide. Myrcella wondered how long it would go on before appearances would come to her mind again, the proper way of things, but Myrcella didn’t care. Though she had never been close to Arya in the capitol, she had known her already then to be something much different than her and Sansa.

“My brother stole you,” Arya said with a gruff little voice while they broke fast. Catelyn wasn’t up yet, and the two of them sat across the table from one another. The younger girl had become wilder in her time gone, clearly, as she ate something like a small animal scurrying to get her scraps before someone large fought to take them away.

“That makes me sound like property, doesn’t it?” Myrcella tested, raising a brow in her direction.

Arya’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose.” She reached for another piece of bread. “Mother said you helped to get Sansa out so I should trust you, but I don’t trust Lannisters.”

“You would hate every single person with a name instead of the person themself?” Myrcella asked.

She wasn’t offended, really. Ever since she had first been taken and shown up at a Stark camp, she had been treated by her name first and her person second. If she could get some of those men to speak with her, call her the lady lion in a way that was almost kind, then she had a feeling she could probably win over Arya Stark. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have the time.

“I wanted to kill your brother,” Arya said. “Someone else got to him first.”

Myrcella chewed on the words. How was there such darkness in someone so young? She thought about Ned Stark on that stage in front of the city, though, and how they had all had to watch him die. If something like that had shaped her so young, maybe she would have been different, too.

Something had shaped her, though. She had been taken Robb Stark’s prisoner, and since then formed a deep affection for his mission and his family. It was reckless and stupid, but she had not been able to stop her heart. She never had, really, which was why she had needed Sansa safe, needed this good family to find stability again.

“Are you trained to kill?” Myrcella asked.

Arya shook her head and turned back to her food. She didn’t wait to swallow to speak again. “I was training with Syrio Forel in King’s Landing, but then the guards killed him. I tried to get someone here to help teach me more, but I think mother forbade it.”

Once when Myrcella was young, she had asked her father if she could go on a hunt with them. It was childish, and she was much too young, but she had felt discouraged when he told her no. It wasn’t even that she had wanted to kill, she had simply wanted to watch. Mostly, she had wanted an excuse to get closer to Robert and find a connection there.

It wasn’t the place for her, and Myrcella knew that now, but she still felt the pang Arya must be feeling now. She had been traversing through the woods alone for almost years now. She had forced herself to be strong in a way Myrcella had never experienced. Back here with her mother, she was certainly happy, but it was hard to fit two puzzle pieces together who had been shaped so differently since this wretched war had begun.

“That’s a shame,” Myrcella said. Her mind was already working, trying to figure out the right course forward. Arya looked up to her briefly, a curious look on her face, before she was distracted again by her food.

* * *

Myrcella knocked on Arya’s door, a warm cloak already around her shoulders. She was learning to deal with the morning chill still, and the way the darkness outside made the world so less warm. It was like being cut off from an energy source.

There was no sound of stirring, and Myrcella knocked again. She heard a clatter beyond the door, and she found herself laughing thinking about Arya plopping herself out of bed to fall to the floor. The door swung open, and Arya looked half dead as she attempted to process what was happening.

“It’s early,” she said. Her hair was sticking up every which way, and her eyes seemed barely open.

“Yes,” Myrcella agreed with a nod. “This early and there will be no men around to bother you when you work in the training yard. We can sneak you a sword, if you need.”

Arya’s eyes widened considerably, and she seemed to look Myrcella up and down as if she couldn’t believe the woman in front of her. Then, she jumped to attention as if she hadn’t been practically acting like the walking dead only seconds earlier.

“I have a sword,” she said excitedly, disappearing behind the door.

Myrcella waited with her back leaned against the wall as she assumed Arya got dressed. She appeared a few minutes later in breeches and a tunic. Myrcella wondered how she wouldn’t get cold without the sun out to warm the day, but she didn’t question the girl. Maybe if she was moving that much it would keep her warm.

They walked in silence down to the training yard, and when Arya positioned herself in the middle with her sword held aloft, Myrcella went to sit on a bench nearby.

“You aren’t training?” Arya asked.

Myrcella was shocked she had thought she would be. “I’m afraid fighting with swords isn’t my forte.”

“You could always train with a bow. I think you could be good at that sort of thing,” Arya said. Myrcella could tell offering compliments like that was not easy for her, which made her appreciate it more.

“Maybe another time,” Myrcella offered. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure her heart could take the fight, and she didn’t see anything wrong with that.

It was hard to tell time with the darkness, but Myrcella sat and watched Arya move through her movements until the sky was light. It reminded her of when she had learned the dances for court, and it was sort of beautiful even if she thought Arya would hate for her to call it that. She became transfixed in the movements, though she knew she should stay more alert.

The sounds of the castle were beginning to grow around them, and Myrcella should get Arya returned to her room and cleaned up. She stood to do just that, but when her eyes trailed up she saw someone watching from above. There, stone still and transfixed as well, was Catelyn.

She caught her eyes, and with Catelyn’s face turned to her Myrcella could see there was a tear leaking perhaps. The morning sun seemed to reflect off of it, so that though there was a fair distance between them Myrcella was almost certain it was there. Catelyn’s body looked tense, and Myrcella wondered if this was it. If this was the action that was going to get her finally treated like an actual prisoner. Had she finally overstepped her bounds?

Then, so small and so sharp Myrcella was half-certain she had imagined it, Catelyn nodded her head. She turned away, and Myrcella had a feeling Arya would be allowed training in the yards still.

* * *

Though Myrcella had been expecting them to be called back to the camp, it turned out Robb Stark found them before it came to that. He returned with a small retinue of men without any forewarning. Myrcella would be stupid to think it wasn’t because of Arya’s return which Catelyn had sent word of.

Every part of Myrcella ached to see Robb again. There had been true fear when he was leaving that he would not come back. It was strange, how that feeling had settled over both of them, like something truly bad was going to happen. He was back, though, and he was safe. All she wanted to do was run across that yard the same way Catelyn had for Arya and hold him in her arms.

She knew she could not, though. She stood above watching down from a window as Robb did that with Arya, then Catelyn. They held on long and tight. Robb lifted Arya from the ground and spun her around several times as they laughed with joy. Myrcella felt wetness on her cheeks and couldn’t help the cries that took her over, thinking of that pure ecstasy at knowing someone you loved so deeply was safe.

Dare she say it, she felt it a bit looking at Robb. After minutes of the three of them hugging and reuniting, she could have swore she saw Robb’s eyes roam again. Was he looking for her? No, he couldn’t be. She turned from the window, not letting herself hope he would look up and spot her. Not thinking about whether he would smile—wide and bright and blinding.

* * *

“You did not see me back in the front,” Robb said. “You haven’t forgotten about me already, have you?”

She jolted from her reverie, unaware he had even made an appearance. She had been thinking about him in this very castle, where he would be. Now that he was back every second seemed to be filled with the thought that maybe she could feel where he was, the heat he carried as he walked the halls.

Her mouth opened as she stood, the chair screeching back against the stone of the floor, but then the words never came. This is what she had feared would happen if she had found him when he first entered. She would not be able to stop herself, and here now alone with him she couldn’t seem to either. Without warning she ran to him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He stumbled back a step, not expecting the hug, but he wasted no time in wrapping his arms right back around her. She dipped her head into the crook of his neck, closing her eyes and taking in his scent. Even though it had been terrible, even though her body had begged to see him, she was glad to have waited so she could have this moment with him in private.

One of his hands came up to cradle the back of her head, and this was perhaps not wise. Myrcella couldn’t care in that moment. She just wanted to keep him close, to pretend they were allowed this and soak in the warmth of a moment. The war continued around them, and yet Myrcella felt safe in this room in Robb’s arms.

When she pulled back, she did it without pleasure. Even her bravery could only go so far. There was a wide smile on his face, and her eyes darted to the scar that curved around his left eyebrow. Her hand darted out, and she found her pointer finger touching the raised mark.

“What happened?” she asked. When she met his eyes again, she could see her was surprised by her physicality still. She pulled back her hand and held it in front of her to stop herself from continuing to touch him.

“Battle,” he said with a shrug. “I’m fine. Others have suffered worse.”

“I’m happy you’ve found yourself home safe.”

Robb’s lips twisted up mischievously. “That seems to be quite apparent.” She narrowed her eyes at him, and he laughed. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Seeing him now, in front of her again after they goodbye and the long separation, Myrcella couldn’t deny how much more alive she felt. It was like taking in a deep breath and feeling it finally expand her lungs to full. There had been a lot to happen in his absence, but it still felt right with him in front of her.

“You came back,” Myrcella said. “I am surprised to find you returning here, though. When you had left you said you would request for us to meet you back at camp. What’s changed?”

There seemed to be a great cloud which washed over Robb’s face, but he shook it off the best he could. “For one, Arya has returned to us and I couldn't wait a second longer to see her. I thought she was trapped with the Boltons, but to find her _here_. I’m not sure I’ve felt that happy in a while.”

Myrcella nodded, waiting for what was to come next. “And?” she prompted.

“There’s been word from King Tommen,” Robb said. “It seems without Joffrey or Tywin, the war fairs a bit harder to be won. Even with Jaime named Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, they are losing. Your brother hasn’t named a hand yet, and I think your mother is attempting to take some control before things get out of her hands.”

“What have they done?” she asked, fearing and hoping with equal measure.

“They want to discuss Northern Independence,” Robb said. “They speak of a peace summit. Independence was the goal, if it’s this close in sight… but my father went off to the capitol and never returned. How do we move forward without me falling on my own sword?”

“Me,” Myrcella said with a quickness that surprised both of them. “If I’m by your side, they can’t kill you as easy as that. We can find a safe location, we can force the meeting. We will get your independence.”

His mouth opened and closed several times, words failing, and then he stepped forward and kissed her forehead the same way he had before leaving. It was a bit fiercer, perhaps, less twinged with goodbye and more with gratitude. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she sat in the moment for as long as she could.

Big things were coming, after all. She needed to enjoy the simplicity before all of their fates were decided.


	6. myrcella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Myrcella devises an interesting ploy to help the North gain independence, but it may change everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am going to say this ONE TIME but pls don't come for me in the comments saying this isn't plausible. like obviously it didn't happen, it's my dumb fanfiction and this is based entirely on what i know from the show. let me live pls, i am so very fragile. i just want pretty people to mack, that is all. 
> 
> p.s. thought i'd gift us all some HAPPY before we have to watch people die tonight

It took longer than Myrcella thought it might to arrange a peace summit of some sort, though she probably should have known from growing up in court around men who were constantly making decisions. Things were a slow process when you had so many big minds attempting to agree on something, and she could tell Robb grew anxious with the waiting. 

“This is a good thing,” Myrcella had said one night a few weeks ago when Robb was pacing back and forth in front of the fire. She was working on fixing the sleeve of Arya’s practice shirt after having ripped it nearly straight off as she sparred earlier that day. Arya had come up to her afterward, asking if she wouldn’t mind so she didn’t have to worry her mother. 

Myrcella had been happy to accept. It had made _her_ quite happy, truthfully, to think of herself as someone Arya was slowly growing to trust through her actions. There was a relationship budding there, still tentative at times, still unsure, but Myrcella felt herself hoping for the best. They were working toward something that could be good for the both of them, she was pretty sure. 

“How is this possibly a good thing?” Robb asked. “We can’t make any arrangements any of us feel safe with. At this rate, the politics will kill us more than the swords ever did. Much slower, much more painful.” 

“Your sister isn’t back yet,” Myrcella said. She looked up from the shirt and eyed him, raising a brow. He stopped pacing to look at her, leaning back against one side of the hearth and holding out his right hand toward the flames casually as if he just needed to be reminded, however small, that there was warmth. “Sansa hasn’t returned.” 

“I know,” he said, but he nodded in a way it was clear he was waiting for her to expand on what she was thinking. 

_ Robb Stark will be the death of me,  _ she thought. “If they don’t know where Sansa is, then we have a better advantage. If  _ we  _ have her, then we have the best advantage of all. I’m sorry to speak of your sister like a bargaining chip, but you have your sisters back and you also have me. They have no hostages for leverage.” 

“We haven’t heard from her in…” he trailed off, bringing a hand up to rub at the bridge of his nose. His facial hair was going beyond aesthetic and growing into something like laziness, and his hair in general was hinging on too long. She should remind him to clean himself up; he could certainly use it. As much as she hated it the image of stability was important. “What if Theon took her somewhere else? What if she’s hurt or– or–” 

“Don’t do that,” Myrcella said softly. “I am certain she will return here any day. We will get news. Think on that scroll sent with the song? Your sister is smart, and it is to Theon’s greatest benefit to return her to you safely. Think of the peace summit, and by the time we muddle through all the politics of getting the event settled I’m sure she will have returned to you.” 

He sighed and pushed off the edge of the hearth to fall into a seat near her. Myrcella wondered when he had become comfortable enough to show her himself honestly. It must have been sometime around when she saw him cry? Oh, how it felt like a million years ago when she had held him. She thought briefly on Bran somewhere in the wilderness and hoped he was alright. She thought on Rickon, too, most likely in the clutches of the Boltons though they could not be certain due to their previous trickery. 

“I am trying so hard not to walk into some big ruse,” he said as he rubbed his hand over his jaw. There were so many nervous ticks on him at times, and there were days Myrcella watched him rubbing his hair or his neck or his beard and thought perhaps he was trying to rub the despair and worry right out of himself. “I am so  _ close _ , Myrcella, to us having it all back. If I misstep just a  _ little  _ it could all come crumbling down, and I will be the fool who lost the North and doomed my family.” 

“Thank Gods you are not a fool,” Myrcella said gracefully, and she smiled just the same as he looked at her. “I am even more thankful you have many intelligent people around you keeping you from being one in times of difficulty.” 

He puffed out a laugh. “You mean yourself?” he asked. 

“I mean myself and your mother. I mean the brave men who have helped you through this war. You may be the King of the North, but you haven’t done it all by yourself. If you were to lose, Robb, you have not done that alone, either.”

“I didn’t mean to say you aren’t smart,” he said with a mischievous tweak of his lips. “Without you I would have lost this war already.” 

“I’m not sure that is quite true,” she replied, turning her eyes back to the shirt. It was easier to focus on stitch by stitch, keeping them straight and even, than to watch and attempt to break apart Robb’s gaze. It was too dangerous to dwell on his features. “If anything, maybe I have kept you from happiness.” 

She thought on Talisa now. Then, she had thought it was all anger for Sansa and a desire to protect the North that had kept Myrcella fighting for him to be smarter about the whole arrangement. Now, though, she could see that at least part of it had been jealousy. Jealousy for the way a man could galavant and not fear for the repercussions, jealousy over Talisa being as strong and beautiful in equal measure, and jealous, quite truthfully, for Robb’s affections. 

It was quite troublesome that she wanted them. It was quite dangerous there were times she was certain she already had them. He was already promised, and she couldn’t dare to be a hypocrite enough to steal him away and ruin this war so close to the finish line. No, those thoughts were tamped dully down. Who got to marry for love anyways?

_ Love no one but your children,  _ her mother had once said to her in a weary sort of declaration.  _ I could no more control my love for you my dear than I could the weather above.  _ It had been a soft moment from her mother, something rare and few and far between therefore cherished like a prized piece of jewelry safely secured in a box. It wasn’t Myrcella’s duty to love and marry, it was her  _ duty  _ to make a good political match and father heirs for whatever Lord it was required of her. 

“No,” Robb said with a strength in his voice Myrcella couldn’t ignore. His eyes were boring into her when she looked, as if maybe he couldn’t speak with his words but he wanted her to know all the same. “You have only brought it, I’m certain.” 

That was weeks ago, though, and in that time they had been able to agree on certain things through numerous discussions back and forth. At first they had attempted through a courier, but it seemed nothing got decided and words were flung back and forth by younger men of their houses who grew quickly tired of the travels. 

No, they stuck to ravens to decipher the most of what the meeting would be, and they would confirm it when it was all decided. Decisions came in loosely over the weeks. They would summit in neutral territory outside the empty Harrenhal. They would have equal measures of security, and equal allowance for advisors and guests. It was a finely balanced affair meant to give neither the advantage, to ensure security above all else. 

Yet, as the summit came more in focus, Sansa still did not appear. The weeks went on, and the Northern Princess did not appear. Myrcella kept comforting Robb, but even she had grown worried. Where was she? What had happened? By all rights, she should have been there already. 

“Any day,” she had whispered to Robb one night, trying her best to form her smile into reassuring. She hated speaking empty words, though, and she was fearing they were beginning to become just that. 

* * *

“Am I letting my hope blind me?” Robb asked as they stared off at the water. It was not the first time he had asked something to that affect, and Myrcella had a feeling it would not be the last either.

“Hope doesn’t have to be blinding,” she said. She could tell he was not pleased by that answer, but he didn’t push it further. 

“If she doesn’t come home soon, she might return and we won’t be here.” Robb’s body was tense next to hers, but she kept her gaze forward on the glittering water. “I don’t want her to feel alone.”

“She’s stronger than you know,” Myrcella said. It was true. Sansa had been worked into something else since Robb had known her, and she surely held signs of the sister he was familiar with, but there was no way she was the same young girl who had disappeared down the King’s Road. 

“Do you really think we can get our independence?” he asked. 

“We’ll certainly try. We can make it as hard as possible for them to refuse us.” She sighed, thinking how her family would feel to hear her say the word  _ us. _

Truthfully, it felt sort of strange and fruitless how hard she fought for this family who had first stolen her and secondly taken her in. If her previous engagement still stood, then she wouldn’t be under the dominion of this man she had fought so hard for. She would be getting shipped back to Dorne, the same way she had been almost years ago now. Prince Trystane must have been married to someone else by now, though, wouldn’t he? It had been too long for him to still wait for her. 

She should have never grown attached to any of them, but she hadn’t been able to close her stupid heart. She never had been able to. It was both a blessing and a curse to care so deeply. 

“You will have to get married,” she said. Had she given too much of her heart away? Her voice was soft, questioning, and she thought maybe he could see past her shiny exterior to everything that was obviously beating within her heart. “A Frey waits.” 

His eyes were on the side of her face, but she couldn’t turn to look. Just like that day when he had returned, she wasn’t sure she could control herself in that moment. The feelings might take over, and then she would be pushing them both past the wrecking point. 

“I don’t want to marry a Frey,” he said softly. 

She closed her eyes and felt the warmth on her face. The days grew colder, and that famous Stark saying would become true one of these days.  _ Winter is coming.  _ Maybe, by then, she would be back in the warmth of Dorne. How lonely it would be after feeling, perhaps for one of the first times in her life, like she was being properly known. 

“I’m not entirely certain I want you to either.” This was playing at fire, she realized. She shouldn’t be able to say this to him. It was beyond wild the fact that their lives had diverged chaotically to here, to the point that they would even want to. 

Because the truth was, those words felt like Robb was saying to her,  _ I want to marry  _ you. The truth was, Myrcella felt like she was saying,  _ I want you to love me _ , back. What a horrible mess they had made of all of this. Maybe he wasn’t, though, and she was still projecting fairy tales onto her own life. Maybe she had romanticized this whole situation until it felt as if it was pulling her apart. 

“For a bridge,” he whispered, and she could tell his eyes had abandoned her face to return to the waves. “I was so young. I feel like I’ve lived lifetimes since I had made that deal. For a  _ bridge. _ ”

“For a war,” she corrected. “You made it to win a war to keep your family safe. People have married for far less honorable reasons.”

“Perhaps it will be a good marriage,” he said, though she could tell the words were nothing but folly. Perhaps he was saying it because he wanted her to correct him, but she shouldn’t and she couldn’t. 

“Perhaps,” she said instead. They sat in the silence, drinking in the relative warmth and the waves, until they had to return to reality. 

* * *

Myrcella was watching Arya spar in the yard when the front gates opened and noise erupted from the front of the castle. Before she could think on it, Myrcella was collecting her skirts in hand and running to the front where a few horses were rushing in. As she approached, she could see Robb and Catelyn had done the same. Arya appeared not a few seconds after herself with darting eyes.

There was a large blonde woman pushing away from the horse with a squire at her side, and then there was a man a few steps behind who seemed vaguely recognizable, and…  _ oh.  _ A girl came to his side, and Myrcella realized this was Sansa and Theon. After all this time, they had finally made it. They were  _ alive  _ and  _ here.  _

At first it seemed like Theon was helping Sansa walk as he burdened her weight, but then Myrcella quickly realized she was helping _him_ walk toward the castle. He patted her arm as he whispered something, and then Sansa was running across the courtyard to Robb and her mother. 

“Go,” Myrcella said to Arya who seemed held in place. “Go hug your family.” 

Then Arya was off too, and Myrcella followed with evenly paced steps. She didn’t want to interrupt anything, but she needed to get closer to this reunion. There were already tears forming at her eyes as she watched all the Starks hug together in an indistinguishable clump. 

Up close, Theon looked somewhat ragged. She couldn’t remember how he had looked as the Stark's ward when she visited Winterfell a lifetime ago, but she was sure it was nothing like this. His hair was scraggly, there was dried blood at his neck, and his body looked thinned. He was favoring his left leg. 

“You need help,” Myrcella said. “We need to get you patched up.” 

His eyes darted back to her, and it took a moment for words to process as his mind worked. “You’re the Princess Myrcella,” he said. She nodded. “We have our fill of princesses here,” he continued in a lame attempt at a joke. Then his eyes darted back across the clearing, and Myrcella could see apprehension take over. When she looked, his eyes were on Robb. 

“He still loves you,” she said as she dipped forward. “He’s going to pretend he won’t for a while, mostly because he’s frustrated he couldn’t stop. I hope you’re worth it. He’s too good to get his heart broken again by you.” 

He gulped, and when he turned his gaze back to her she could see something sturdier in return. “I’m trying to be,” he said. “Worth it, that is.” 

Before they could speak any more, Sansa and Robb were by their sides. Myrcella took a step back to let the two men have a moment, and she made eye contact with Sansa who stood on the other side of them. She seemed to be watching wearily as well. Then, after a painfully long moment, Robb reached out an arm and the two of them clasped them together. It was stiff and awkward, but Myrcella had hope that maybe it wasn’t destroyed beyond repairing for them. 

“You got her home,” Robb said. It wasn’t quite a thank you, it wasn’t quite  _ I’m glad you’re here _ , and Myrcella knew it would be a while before he would be able to say any of that. It held feeling, though. His eyes caught down to his leg and the cuts on his body. “You’re hurt. We need to get you to the maester.”

Myrcella walked around them over to Sansa whose eyes were still darting between her family and the ruined limbs of Theon. 

“I’m glad to see you, Princess Sansa.” She dipped lightly, smiling at her wide and full. It felt like this was what they had been truly working toward since that first time Myrcella had been privy to Robb’s tent to speak with him. “You made it home.” 

“No,” she said fiercely as her eyes darted to the castle. “This isn’t home. Not quite, but we’ll get it back.” 

“We will,” Myrcella agreed, feeling even odder using  _ we  _ to this fellow princess who would not understand her yet. 

“I’m sorry you were taken because of me,” Sansa said. 

Myrcella shrugged. “I am sorry you had to be in King’s Landing at all. You’re safe now. Well, as safe as any person can be in wartime.” 

“We need to get him inside,” Sansa said as if that reminded her of his injuries. 

Theon met her gaze. Myrcella tried to read what they were saying to one another that she could not see. The woman, Brienne Myrcella learned by Catelyn calling her such, came back to his side to help guide them all into the castle. They were supposed to leave for the peace summit in a matter of days, Myrcella realized. Her words had not been empty, her hope not silly. 

She could feel Robb vibrating beside her with happiness and energy. It was as if this whole time they had been slowly collecting parts of him, bit by bit, getting him more ready for all the war that was still yet to come. Now, they were nearly ready at last. 

* * *

While Theon was being sought to by the maester, the rest of them filed into the hall to get food. Sansa was distracted, though, as if she couldn’t quite believe they had finally made it here. She took the food gratefully all the same, and after a few minutes of her dipping into her warm soup with hearty bread, someone spoke.

“What happened?” Arya asked, the curiosity winning out. 

Sansa looked up at her younger sister. How strange it must be for them to see each other after all this time when their paths had diverged so wildly. It made Myrcella think about what it would be like to see Tommen again. Would he look like a near grown man? Or would he still seem nothing more than her little brother. 

“Where would you like me to start?” Sansa said after a moment. “From when our father’s head was sliced from his body in front of me or from when Theon rescued me during the Battle of Blackwater Bay?” 

There was a tenseness that had taken over the room, though Myrcella was fairly sure Sansa hadn't quite intended for her words to come out harshly. She seemed to catch herself as the silence settled over them all, and in the absence of words she shot up taller, straightened herself out and put on a more collected face. 

“I apologize, that was too—”

“It was just the truth,” Arya said with a shrug, pointedly looking down at her food. 

Myrcella felt something like pride rush through her that Arya would speak up for her sister in that little way. The two of them had spent some time speaking between sparring and the tasks that took them over in the afternoon, and while Arya never liked speaking of feelings much or of anything really and the two of them would never be spilling secrets between themselves like best friends, Myrcella knew she had been witness to some of the dark things that had twisted inside of Arya's head since she ran from King’s Landing. 

There had been a long time Arya blamed Sansa for what had transpired, but Myrcella thought she understood that. It was easier to place all the blame around others—some deserving of it, some not—when all you really felt was angry and helpless. 

“How’d you get out of King’s Landing?” Arya continued. 

Sansa sighed, and she set down her utensils to cross her hands on the table in front of her. Catelyn’s eyes were trained on something in the distance, not making contact with any of them, before she slowly turned to watch her daughter. How hard it must be to have to hear and see the pain someone you loved so deeply had endured. 

“Stannis was attacking the city hard, and we were all certain it would be sacked. My handmaiden, Shae, she was the only friend I had in the city, really. She… She told me I had to either go hide in my room and wait for Stannis’s forces, or I could go to hers. I thought she was talking about Robb, that he would be there to help me escape, but he wasn’t. It was Theon. We got on a ship, we sailed North, and when we were on land again we heard of Winterfell being taken by the Boltons.”

“Is that why…” Arya asked, pointing up at her head. 

Sansa brought up a hand and held the darkened braid between her fingers. “Yes. We knew it wasn’t safe to travel with such a large retinue if the Boltons were looking for me. Theon and I were taking a long way, traveling at odd times and staying as covert as we could manage. We were a day out when we were found by men belonging to the Boltons.” 

There was a darkness in her eyes, and Myrcella wondered how the man Roose Bolton who had seemed serious but not all that alarming could become someone who may have caused a look like that. 

“I thought it was lost. He stayed to protect me as I rode off, but my horse jolted and someone was coming… it was Brienne,” Sansa said. She looked down the length of the table to give Brienne a smile, and the older woman blushed in reply. “We got out fine, but they had Theon. Brienne wanted to take me right here, but I refused to let her until we got him back. It was Bolton’s bastard, he and a group of men had him captured at a small fort slightly north. They were torturing him for information on where I might be.”

“We had to wait a few days to find him and then a few more to figure out our plan,” Brienne said as she leaned forward, forearms on the table. “I’m sorry for not returning her immediately, Lady Catelyn. She can be quite persuasive.” 

Catelyn smiled and reached across the table to grab a hand. “You got her here safe. You filled your oath.”

“We got Theon and made our way back here,” Sansa finished for them. “That might be a bit simplified, perhaps, but that is the most of it. I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for Theon and Brienne. They both helped get me here back to you all.” 

Myrcella could feel the energy of the room. She could sense that things were growing, building, and soon it would all be at a head. In this moment, though, as she watched Sansa take delicate bites of soup and Catelyn dart her eyes back and forth between her girls, it seemed like it could only be better things. 

* * *

The journey was long, but her and Catelyn and Robb made it together. Brienne stayed behind to watch Sansa and Arya with a few other men who were left at Riverrun. They had most of Robb’s trusted advisors, and a few of their strongest fighters, and that was who made the long trek to hopefully create peace.

They set up camp a far enough distance away from the meeting spot. It was strange the energy that seemed to blow through the tents that night, and while Myrcella took dinner with Robb and Catelyn she could barely find herself capable of speech. What would it be like to see her mother again? To see Tommen? There were too many variables, and the idea of being so close to her family again was startling. 

Myrcella was unsure how she would feel. She wondered if it would be like stepping back into a familiar room or if it would perhaps feel foreign and strange. These people had shifted in their lives since she had disappeared, too. Everything would be different. 

“Would you allow me to be dismissed? I find I’m quite tired,” Myrcella said after barely touching her food. She wasn’t even sure what they had been talking about when she interrupted. 

Catelyn eyed her in an unreadable expression, but Robb gave a brief nod and she stood up to make her leave. 

“Would you like someone to walk you back?” he asked.

“I…” she was so close to saying no, but then her eyes landed on him and every part of her wanted to say yes. “If your mother wouldn’t miss you. I’d hate to break up your dinner.” 

“It would be no bother,” Catelyn said. 

“I’ll walk you back and return to discuss with you further,” Robb said as he bent down to kiss his mother's cheek. 

He held out his arm to her as they made their way out of the tent, and she took it cautiously. She wasn’t sure why the world felt dangerous and unknowable around her, and why it seemed as if she was seeing it through a fog. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. “You seem a bit distracted.”

“I’m tired,” she said, repeating the sentiment from earlier. “We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow, and I’m not certain how it will all play out.” 

“You know,” he began, and she could tell there was something big and powerful about to come out of his mouth, “before you showed up I was so concerned with the fight of battle and the anger at what your family had done, I didn’t think for a second past it. I was seeking some sense of security for even a moment that I sometimes lost sight of the big picture.” 

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Myrcella said. They were in front of her tent now, and she turned to look at him head on. “You never have.” 

He shook his head. “You don’t get it. I was raised by a soldier. I was raised to  _ be  _ one. It means you look at death, and it’s simply another part of your role. You, though, when you showed up and you started talking about hope and a path and finding our way out of this it suddenly became more than blood and death. You did that.” 

Myrcella felt her lips tremble, and she brought a hand up to cover up the image. She didn’t want to break down in front of Robb. He had always seemed to see himself as less good than he was, and maybe she had seen herself the same. They were fighting for the light more than they were fighting to win, and Myrcella used to think maybe that made her naive but now she was pretty sure it was the strongest thing to fight for. 

“Do you ever think on what it will be like when this is all over, and I will have to leave?” she asked quietly. His face fell a little, and she felt bad for having caused it. 

“Maybe you don’t, maybe…” But what answer could he possibly have to that? There was no solution. This was as doomed now as it had been at the beginning for them. 

“We are going to do tomorrow what I promised we would do all those days and moons ago. We will get you your independence. We will get you Winterfell back. You’ve done great work on the family portion of it all.” These were the certainties she could offer him, and he seemed grateful to be able to hold them. 

Boldly, the boldest perhaps she had been yet, she reached out her palms and held his face within them. He looked at her with something she dared not call love. 

“Let’s not think past that,” she said. He was too tall for her to reach up toward his forehead, but she could lean her own against the rough, fine hairs of his chin. He dipped his head forward and let his nose bury into the top of her hair. “Your mother will be missing you,” she whispered after a moment. 

Any longer, she feared the impropriety would catch up to them. Any longer, and she was certain she would never be able to leave. 

* * *

Her heart had been beating wildly all morning, but when they entered into the room for the beginnings of negotiations she could feel it pounding in her ears. When she saw her mother with Jaime beside her, though, it seemed to stop entirely. She wasn’t sure she was breathing at all.

Then her eyes swept the scene further to see Tommen not nearly looking old enough to be a king at all, with Margaery Tyrell beside him. There was her mother's Uncle Kevan, and several other men she assumed were on the high council. It was strange to see the signs that life had went tumbling on without her, though they obviously would have. 

Myrcella wanted to walk across the space between all their chairs and hug her family, but she wasn’t sure what was allowed of her. She also feared that by chance of leaving Robb’s side for even a second maybe something terrible would befall him. If anyone in this room had truly intended to do something to him, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop it, but she assumed she at least made it a fraction more difficult. 

“Thank you for meeting us,” Tommen said with a bow of his head. He turned toward Myrcella as she sat, and there was a genuine smile on his face. For a minute, she could have been right back in King’s Landing running through the halls with him to find his cat. “It is good to see you, sister.” 

“You as well,” she said with a smile. “Mother. Uncle.” It was Jaime’s face that threatened to tear Myrcella apart if she left her gaze to linger. It was so open, and she thought for the first time he would be the person that if she were to return to the castle would wait to run to her across the courtyard. He would hold her without shame, now after all they had endured together. 

“Thank you for inviting us here to discuss the North’s Independence, and a peaceful end to this long-suffering war,” Robb said. He looked quite good today, and Myrcella was thankful he had taken it upon himself to clean up his facial hair and get a good sleep so he looked rested. 

“I was rather hoping we could discuss terms beyond independence,” Tommen said. He looked over to his side at the Queen Margaery as he spoke, and Myrcella felt the edge of her lips twist up. She loved her brother dearly, but he had been passed from one woman’s hands to another’s. Myrcella hoped this one had less anger in her heart. 

“Currently,” Kevan began, completing the thought for Tommen, “you aren’t even stationed in the North. Your home has been taken by the Boltons who have the last surviving Stark daughter. Why would we give you the North when all it would take is an inopportune match in battle to befall you, and we have all we need to rule it.” 

Robb leaned forward. Myrcella had not seen him like this before. She fully understood now what those men meant when they called him the Young Wolf. He looked nearly predatory. He looked as if he could launch forward and take the whole room down. She had no doubt whatever he would say next, it was charged with energy and power. 

“Roose Bolton may have Winterfell, aye that's true, but he doesn’t have Arya Stark because  _ we  _ have Arya Stark. We also have Sansa Stark, who we captured from your own castle while King’s Landing was nearly defeated by Stannis Baratheon. We have your sister, Your Grace, the Princess Myrcella. Right now, we have tactical advantage. I haven’t lost a single battle, and at this rate I don’t plan on losing anymore.”

“Stannis Baratheon still lurks somewhere in the North by the wall, we’ve heard,” Cersei said as she dipped forward with a smirk. Myrcella noticed several of the council had turned with narrowed eyes, upset by the interruption. 

Partially, Myrcella wondered how she had managed to get here with the obvious dislike which sat around the room. Though, Cersei had always said she loved her kids more than anything. What could have kept her apart from both making sure Tommen stood his ground and seeing Myrcella again?

“He was the man your father wanted on the throne, was he not? Are you betraying his memory? How can we know you don’t get the North and come back wanting more. Why would we support you when you call my son a false king?” 

From her spot to his right, Myrcella could see the way his shoulders lowered the slightest bit. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair. 

“If you give me the North, then I will stop Stannis from getting any closer to King’s Landing. He is weak, with few followers left, and I would be surprised if he could possibly survive that far North for much longer. But if he does manage to come further down, we will wipe him out. All we ask is for the North and the Riverlands. That leaves you with five Kingdoms I want no part in.” 

“All you ask,” Kevan stated, and Myrcella could hear the disbelief. 

“How exactly do you plan to ensure our truce?” Tommen asked. “Your father promised to serve mine, and then when he died he didn’t stick to his word. How do we trust you?” 

Myrcella could feel Robb and Catelyn grow tense. She knew the energy of the room was charged, and she knew it would be, but it seemed to thicken the air in a way she had never experienced. She thought back to last night when she had mentioned to Robb what happened afterward, and she thought about the way Robb had told her maybe she wouldn’t have to leave him. 

It was a bold move, but he had once told her he liked it when she was so. She thought about all the horrible ways this could end, and she thought about what she  _ wanted.  _ She had been taught it was terrible to want anything because it would destroy her, but she didn’t want to be afraid. Myrcella wanted peace, and she wanted love. 

“We will ensure peace the way others have done it politically many times before,” Myrcella said, trying to pulse a strength in her voice she did not feel inside. The eyes that turned to her seemed surprised, and she was reminded that outside of the camp she had grown comfortable in the last years and the castle of Riverrun, people looked at her and thought she was nothing more than a doll. “By marriage between I, Princess Myrcella kin to King Tommen, and Robb Stark, the King of the North, we can ensure peace.” 

Myrcella had never said something and known she had shocked every single person in the room before. There was uproar from across from her, and there were grumbles behind, and when she stared across the room the first eyes she seemed to meet were Margaery’s. Her lips were tilted in a hint of surprise, and also as if she was pleased. She tilted her head slightly, a minute nod, and Myrcella wondered if she was at least a little bit impressed. 

“I need a private council with my sister,” Tommen said in a shaky voice. “Then we can continue discussions.” 

Myrcella stood up, but before she could take a step forward there was a hand on her forearm. When she turned, terrified to look, it was Robb. His eyes burned with fire, and she tried to keep her composure. Had she betrayed his trust? Had she ruined his future? She had been blinded by what she wanted—The North and  _ him.  _ Now that she admitted it to herself, the world around her seemed more dangerous. 

“Take Grey Wind with you,” he ordered. 

Myrcella nodded, and she felt the fur of the wolf by her right hand as he entered through the tent and to her side. As she followed her brother to discuss whatever was to be talked about, she felt sure. At this point, the only way forward was through. 

* * *

“You  _ stupid  _ girl,” Cersei said the second they were alone.

It was the strangest of family reunions—Tommen, Cersei, Jaime, and herself. Myrcella felt how oddly the four of them fit together in this space. Grey Wind stayed dutifully by her side, and she was happy for the warmth. 

“Stupid?” Myrcella asked. “All I’m doing is ensuring peace, mother. Can’t you see that?” 

Jaime came to her then and hugged her tightly to himself. When he let go after placing a small kiss on her forehead, Tommen stepped forward to squeeze her hand. Her mother stayed a few feet away from her, and Myrcella wanted to hug her and she had the feeling Cersei wanted to hug her, too. The issue stayed between them like a wall.

“Please don’t tell me you fell in love with a Stark,” Cersei said. 

“This isn’t about love. This is about a war that will never end. I’ve seen how they fight, I’ve seen their resources, and I’m not certain you can win against him. He’s offering to finish a war we started when Joffrey sliced their father’s head off.” 

“Ned Stark died by honor,” Cersei said. “He hit a bee’s nest and then asked not to be stung.” 

“There may come a time when you need him on the crown’s side to fight other enemies. Isn’t it better to give them independence? Tommen, you have to see that this war will kill more than just the men fighting it. All the people who starve inside the walls of your own city. Do you really want to let this drag on for more years?” 

Tommen looked between them all, his mouth opening and closing without words to fill it. 

“We can keep fighting,” Myrcella said, summoning all the strength within her, “but I will remain at their sides as a captured princess. Wouldn’t you rather I become a queen, mother?” 

Cersei moved forward slowly, her steps seeming to take minutes, and the tension in the room cluttered the space. When she was a foot away, she reached out and held onto Myrcella’s shoulders. It was the closest to a hug they may get, she realized. 

“I warned you to only love your children,” she said. “Why did you have to love? Why did you have to love  _ him _ ?” 

“Sometimes,” she said back with a small smile, “we can’t seem to help who we love. Isn’t that right?” Her eyes darted to Jaime, and she wondered what her father thought of her in this moment. His face looked close to respect, but she couldn’t tell if she was reading into it with what she hoped she would see. “Aren’t you tired of King’s Landing? Why don’t you go back to Casterly Rock—you and Jaime. Why don’t you try being happy.” 

Cersei shook her head, pursing her lips. “When you were born you were made too sweet for this world. I thought surely it would swallow you up. Yet, here you are.” 

“Here I am,” she said. She took a step back, and she eyed the three of her family. She loved them, truly she did, but love alone could not fix anything. She had learned that at some point, and she would not forget it. “Please consider it, Tommen. This might be the safest way forward.” 

With Grey Wind at her side, she left to go back to their camp. 

* * *

She was barely within the folds of her own tent, still breathing wildly as she tried to calm herself after the moves she had made, when Robb rushed in without warning.

“What did you  _ do _ ?” he asked, voice gruff. He was pacing in front of her, seemingly filled with too much manic energy to pause himself. She supposed she couldn’t blame him after what she had done. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. It felt small coming out of her mouth, and more than anything it seemed a simple request to  _ please don’t hate me.  _ “I know I am not who you would want to marry, and I know I’ve made this situation ten times more complicated, and yet—”

“You think I’m mad because I would be forced to marry  _ you _ .” He finally stopped in front of her, and she could tell he was worked up. He had been since she left to go speak with her family, and there was a wild sort of frenzy rushing underneath his skin. 

She knew because she was feeling it, too. “I thought maybe it would be better to marry me than a Frey girl you had never met. If it could help you get your home back…”

“I’m mad,” he said as he stepped forward, but his stance seemed more relaxed than the words implied, “because you have auctioned away your life to me to help my family get Winterfell and the North. Why would you do that, Myrcella?” 

“Don’t you know?” she asked. She couldn’t stop the soft smile or the tilt of her head. He was handsome, no doubt, but he was also  _ beautiful.  _ There was something about him that radiated good, that held you close with a warmth and power that made you feel safer, more capable of taking the world on. 

He shook his head. “Know  _ what  _ Myrcella.” 

She stepped forward and held onto his face. She looked up into his eyes, and she darted her eyes downward to stare at his lips. “I was stupid enough to fall in love with you,” she said. “I would do anything for you to be happy.” 

His eyebrows crashed together. “You love me? Truly? After everything I’ve done to you.” 

“Truly.” She nodded. “I don’t know how to stop.” 

He sighed, but he looked something like a man finally submitting himself to the sea’s current. He propelled in a new direction, finally at peace to give up the fight. “Then don’t,” he said. 

Before the words could fully compute in her head, he was dipping forward to catch her lips with his own. He held onto her waist, bringing her closely to him, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Kissing him was more than she could have imagined. It seemed to light every part of her alive, seemed to fill her with something full and inescapable. 

His lips moved against her own, and she did not know how to get enough of him. It was like she had finally been allowed to drink all of him, but there was too much and her thirst never lessened. She could stay in this moment, kissing Robb Stark, for the rest of her life and never tire. 

“I love you,” he said when he pulled back. Their faces were close, and Myrcella could see the scar above his eyebrow and the flecks in his eyes. She almost felt like she could see straight into him and to his heart. “I would rather marry you than a Frey girl, but I would also rather marry you over anyone. The thought of you ever having to leave my side tore me apart. I couldn’t bare it, yet you came up with a solution, I… I can’t believe I could get so lucky.” 

She left her arms wrapped around his neck, and she held him close. She pushed her head into his neck, placing a soft kiss there, and the two of them held onto one another as if letting go might break this moment forever. “I would worry too terribly about you doing something foolish if I left. I am your most trusted advisor, after all, and the war is not yet fully won.” 

“Soon,” he said as he placed a kiss at the crown of her head. Then he pulled them back to place one on her forehead, one over every freckle on her cheeks and nose. Finally, he kissed her lips again in a blissful sigh. “Soon, we will be happy and home.” 

* * *

Myrcella wished her singular bold moment could have changed everything, and the peace summit was a grand success, but there were stubborn people and a million more decisions to be made between the dual kings. She was not let in on many of the choices, which was fine by her. She had played her card, and the technicalities could be worked out by the other advisors.

There were many concessions and specifics that Myrcella didn’t care to grasp all of, but the simplest version came down to this. They would gain their independence on several simple conditions. No Lannister armies would help them take back Winterfell from the Boltons. While the deal with the Boltons had been made at a time with Joffrey and Tywin, the crown didn’t want to take either side of the issue. Robb would have to fight for Winterfell, but if he was able to get it then the North was theirs. Then, they had to help take down Stannis. If Stannis made it further South than Winterfell, the deal was off. 

Nearly two weeks later, Myrcella packed up to head back to Riverrun. She said goodbye to Jaime and Cersei and Tommen. She gave hugs and promise of news when the wedding was decided. By chance alone, Myrcella had a brief moment to say goodbye to her brother’s wife. 

“That was a bold move,” Margaery said. “I am sorry I haven’t been gifted with more time to get to know you, good-sister.” 

Myrcella nodded. “It is truly a shame.” She turned her gaze to Tommen who was speaking with Kevan a few feet away. He looked so young with the sun against his hair. “Be kind to him, please. The world could benefit with more good queens.” 

Margaery’s lips twisted up into something that was not a smile but not a smirk, either. It seemed pleased. She dipped forward and kissed both of Myrcella’s cheeks. Then Myrcella returned to her caravan, and the journey back to Riverrun began. 

* * *

“This is inappropriate,” Myrcella said. She knew her hair must be a wild mess by now as it rubbed against the bark of the tree behind her back, and her face was  _ certainly  _ flushed.

He bent forward to kiss her again regardless. His hands were leaned against the bark of the tree on either side of her face, and from here as the wind carried it she could smell him well. Some times, Myrcella felt with Robb as if they were always in increments. Their relationship was blossoming in moments of peace between the wreckage. She wondered if they would ever truly _find_ peace. 

_ We will _ , she told herself because she must. 

“You are my intended now,” he said. 

“Intended,” she said with a smile. “Not wife. Let us hope Walder Frey does not hunt us down for depriving him of a King.” 

Robb smiled boyishly. It was a good look on him. “I think two Kings should be enough to peacefully break up an engagement.” 

Unable to help herself with him this close in front of her, smiling like the world was light and his shoulders weightless, she pushed forward and wrapped her arms around his neck to kiss him. Her weight was enough to push his balance off, but he compensated by holding her up and spinning her a few times around before setting her back down. 

“There will be so many eyes on us at Riverrun,” Myrcella said as she smiled, “when all I want to do is this.” 

“Stop reminding us of the negatives.” Robb pushed fallen blonde tendrils behind her ears to look at her face in the moonlight. “I simply want the pleasure of your company, and the feeling of your lips for a few minutes more if I may ask it.” 

“You may, my king,” she said, and the laugh was barely pulled from her lips before he was kissing her again. 

* * *

It was nice to see Sansa’s hair red again as Myrcella walked into the room. Her head was dipped as she worked on a dress of some sort, and Myrcella carried her basket of projects with her toward another seat in the room.

“Would you mind if I joined you?” Myrcella asked before sitting. 

Sansa barely moved her head, but she did look up briefly before she gave a small nod. The dress she was working on was blue and velvet, something certainly suited for the North, and Myrcella couldn’t help but admire the small detailing work. 

“That’s beautiful,” she said. 

Sansa gave her a small smile. “Quite honestly, I was happy to wear anything that was  _ clean  _ after trekking about in the dress I wore all those weeks on the run. Now that I’m a bit more settled, though, I find I miss the dresses of my youth. I miss Winterfell’s climate.”

“Your brother has told me much of Winterfell, and though I wouldn’t say he’s a particularly gifted storyteller he very obviously loves your home. I can understand why you all miss it.” Myrcella reached forward into her basket and grabbed for the gloves she had been working on. 

“You don’t miss your home?” Sansa asked, but it felt more as if she was asking something between the words. 

“You’ve been in my home,” Myrcella replied honestly. She didn’t want to start on any other foot with Sansa for fear of ruining their chance at something  _ real.  _ “I fear while I had a good upbringing, it wasn’t nearly like your own. I miss Tommen, perhaps. In the odd moments my uncles or mother, but I don’t miss King’s Landing. All the lies and anger simmering around waiting to boil to the surface.” 

“I am happy to be free,” Sansa said. Her hands paused, and Myrcella waited as Sansa took a breath before turning her gaze. “Do you want to marry my brother, truly? This isn’t a ploy created by you or put on you?” 

“Neither,” Myrcella answered. “I am afraid I may have done the rather reckless thing of actually loving him. It may be the most reckless thing I have done in my life.” 

Sansa laughed lightly, and it felt genuine. There was a fine line with the other girl’s actions, and Myrcella knew she could play parts rather well. Hopefully, back with her family, she could begin to grow more into herself again. 

“I thought I loved your brother once,” Sansa said as she bent over her dress, muffling her words slightly. “He was a monster. I knew nothing of love.” 

“He was a monster,” Myrcella agreed. Yet, still, she had nights where she woke from nightmares of what his death had been like. She imagined drinking the wine and feeling your breath stop, your throat constrict, your death coming and not being able to stop it. “I think love is knowing someone. I think it’s feeling more known because of that person. What do I truly know of love, though, I am only just discovering it.” 

Sansa hummed. They sat with the sounds of their needles moving in and out, the barest sounds of the yard outside as people worked. “I would like to know love.”

“I hear Lord Greyjoy has yet to return to the Iron Islands. It sounds as if he had pledged himself to your brother again,” Myrcella said, the words dangling between them. 

The redhead looked up and bit her lip before letting the gesture drop. She sighed. “I do not think I love him.” 

“But?” Myrcella prompted, keeping her gaze elsewhere as to not put too much pressure on the girl. 

“He saved me, though he didn’t do it through altruism. He did, though, and over all that time we spent together I think he saw more of me than any other person has before in some ways. The me I am  _ now.  _ He saw all of it, and then he was willing to die for it. How many people are lucky enough to have that?”

“Few, probably.” The sun peeked through the window, and Myrcella wished they were closer so she could feel it wash over their faces. Perhaps later she would have to go for a walk. “You don’t have to love him, yet. You don’t need to put a name to it. You’re safe now, and that offers you the luxury of time I think.” 

“For now,” Sansa said bitterly. “Sometimes I fear we will never truly be safe or settled again. I would like you to see Winterfell, though. You would enjoy it. I think you could find peace there if we ever get that far to attempt to properly search for it.”

“You are a smart woman,” Myrcella said. 

Sansa smiled at her. “I am here because you, I hear.  _ You  _ are smart.” 

“You’re here because of you. Theon may have gotten you from the castle, I may have thought it up, but you wouldn’t have gotten here if you hadn’t survived it all first. I hope you don’t forget that.” 

“You are as kind as they say.” 

Myrcella shrugged. “I can not fight like your sister or brother. I fail to be quite as fierce as your mother, perhaps. This, though, I can do.” 

“You will make a good Queen, then.” 

“I simply wanted to help get it back for all of you. Past all of that I haven’t thought much.”

“Well,” Sansa said as she bent back down to the dress. The seriousness of the conversation was vanishing around them, “you will have to let me help make your wedding dress. I have quite the eye for all of that.” 

“I would be honored.” 

Myrcella went back to her stitches, but the silence that filled the room was as sweet as wine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be myrcella point of view, but there's potential to have sansa's pov back in a little bit, too. if that's something you want let me know in the comments!!


	7. two princesses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to get this up so i'm sorry if there are some errors! i'll do a final read through in the morning, but i think i caught most of it.   
>    
>  [i have a completed story photoset/aesthetic on tumblr!! pls reblog if you liked the story <3](https://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/post/184660174916/if-i-could-rewrite-the-history-rating-t)

While the planning seemed to take ages, the goodbye lasted for barely seconds. Myrcella wanted to hold him in her arms and tell him he couldn’t leave, she wouldn’t allow it, but what would be the point? This was everything they had worked for. This was the final moment they could start to take it all back. 

“Please,” she said as he dipped their foreheads together, as he brought her palm up to his mouth and kissed it soft and sweet. “Don’t do anything stupid. I know it will be hard with me gone, but…”

He chuckled into her flesh. “Why would I do something stupid when I have a woman who has such confidence in me to return to?” 

She pulled back, held his face roughly between her palms, and conjured every inch of the lady lioness she could manage. “If you don’t come back, I will never forgive you.” 

He tilted his head, a bemused smile on his lips. “I will come back, even if just as a spirit to haunt you for the rest of your days. Hopefully it can suffice.” 

Not caring about the onlookers or the impropriety, only caring about the man in front of her Myrcella loved so very much and could not bear to think of never returning, she propped herself up onto his toes and let him meet her in the middle for a kiss. 

With the movement of her lips, she tried to say it all.  _ Come back. I love you. Do not leave me in this world alone.  _ For who would she be without him? It had felt like he had slithered his way beneath her flesh, he was part of who she was now, and the thought of shouldering that alone felt unbearable. 

“I promise,” he said back, and though she knew it was stupid, and though she knew it was reckless, she could not seem to stop herself from believing it with every inch of her being. 

* * *

The energy of Riverrun was a bizarre mix of chaos and stagnancy. Sansa could not seem to figure it out, though she understood why. Everyone waited for news of the battle that would take place outside Winterfell. Oh, how she longed to be home more than anything else. She wanted to return to the North and feel the cold air against her flesh.

There would go long stretches where she forgot about the war, and she would think of nothing but the simple day to day tasks ahead of her. Then, she would think about the men she loved so far away fighting for her home. A panic would strike her heart, and she would have to pause to catch her breath. When there was finally peace, she wondered if that final weight would be lifted or something new would come to replace it. 

In the odd moments when she couldn’t seem to help herself, the image of Theon as he left would fill her mind. The way his hair had edged around his ears, the way his body had begun to heal itself fuller, and the smirk he used to wear with ease would sometimes edge back out to play. It was him but not him, and she thought maybe she could understand the sensation of wearing that feeling more than anyone else.

Mostly, though, Sansa worried about Myrcella. 

It wasn’t as if the other woman had given her any right to worry. If anything, since Robb left, Myrcella had been nothing but composed. She ate when she was supposed to and worked on clothes. She talked with all the ladies of the castle, and she kept going to watch Arya practice in the yard. It was the composure she thought scared her the most because Sansa understood it. She had done it herself, to convince herself and everyone around her she was fine and held together. 

Today, they were sitting on the sidelines as Arya ran through her movements easily by herself. The two of them were darning socks, but mostly they were watching Arya with a sort of transfixion. It was hard to not watch the movements as Arya moved through them. Sansa remembered how her sister had used to call it water dancing and thought that was perhaps the right sort of way to refer to it. 

“Have you ever thought about it?” Sansa asked as she darted her eyes between Arya and Myrcella to her left who was also watching her sister. Myrcella’s brows raised, and Sansa continued. “To fight like her, I mean. Has it ever been something that interested you?”

Myrcella shook her head. “Perhaps I’ve entertained the idea a time or two. Watching your sister, though, I think has made me think about it both more and less.”

“How is that?”

“I’ve never seen a woman’s weapon be an  _ actual  _ weapon before,” Myrcella began, the socks long forgotten in her lap. “My whole life has been an education in all the weapons a woman  _ does  _ have, something I’m certain my mother at some point may have spoken to you about—sexuality and cleverness, manipulation. Seeing Arya was the first time I actually contemplated a woman could be born to fight, same as Brienne. When you see them fight, natural fighters, it makes me think about it less. I don’t think I was born to hold a sword. I don’t think women like you or I were destined for that path. Though I mean so offense.” 

Sansa nodded. “I understand.” She took a deep breath, letting it wash out in front of her. “Sometimes when I was in King’s Landing I would think about what it would be like if I could hold a sword. I used to think about slashing out at all those people who tried to keep me there, but I know I wouldn’t have ever been able to escape. Not really. Then, I started thinking about Robb rescuing me.” 

It had been her biggest fantasy, really. She would spend long hours fantasizing about Robb sweeping into King’s Landing and taking her away. There had been times she got so desperate she would think about Jon coming to save her. Even just to see Arya or Bran or Rickon had seemed like a dream too sweet to hold onto. If she had been younger, before Joffrey and the manipulative politics, she would have dreamt of some beautiful prince taking her away. The capitol had stamped those sorts of dreams out of her, she thought. 

“You were rescued though not in a way you expected,” Myrcella said. “Theon Greyjoy.” 

“Yes.” She sighed. The sky above them began to cloud over, which was a relief from the sun that had been particularly strong that day, but she was worried it might begin to rain. The weather had been so sporadic as of late. “Now he went to fight another war that he might not return from. I almost wish…” 

“Almost wish?” she prompted. 

Sansa turned now to look at the other princess with her small, easy tilt of lips and the blonde hair cascading down her back. She was beautiful, surely, but how many people had looked right past her because of it? There was something running a course underneath the appearance—strong, fierce, witty—that Sansa was beginning to know intimately well. It must have bewitched Robb completely. 

“Are you trying to discuss boys with me?” she asked with a raise of her brow. 

Myrcella laughed with something close to a giggle. When she met Sansa’s eyes, it was almost as if they could turn back the clocks to something more innocent. What would their lives have been like under different circumstances? Could they have been easier friends with the roles of their lives shifted? They couldn’t go back, though, and there was something exciting about knowing they might have each other going forward. They were not the girls they once were, but they were something forged from them. They had not lost them entirely. 

“Well, who else would you do it with?” Myrcella asked. “Certainly not your sister, no offense, and if you wanted to discuss Theon I have a feeling your mother might be a bit averse to it despite all that has transpired in the name of seeking redemption.”

She had a point. “There was a moment before he left where I wanted to say something sappy or romantic, something about a future, but it all felt unbelievably childish. Instead, I said barely anything at all. I hugged him, and I told him to be safe and make it through.” 

“The world has done everything to stamp out the romance we once loved, didn’t it? It tried to take those stories and songs and punish our love for them. I have never understood why someone couldn’t be kind and brave and smart all at once.” 

“Most people find it easier to get what they want through cruelty,” Sansa said. 

Myrcella hummed. “I wish that wasn’t the way it was. I hope to help make the world a bit better if I can manage it.” 

Sansa couldn’t deny that she was a little in awe of the woman besides her. Myrcella was capable of being many things at once, and all the while she was still not tainted by her own mother’s disposition—a mother who had caused Sansa distress for so long. Myrcella was a lion, but she also held some of those tendencies of the wolves the Starks were constantly being compared to. It turned out to be a lovely combination. 

“You and my brother are quite suited for one another, aren’t you?” Sansa said with a shake of her head. “Maybe we can thank the Gods for small miracles in a time of war.” 

“No,” Myrcella disagreed, but there was a smile on her lips. There was sunshine on her face and emanating with her words. “I won’t thank a single God for the things we created ourselves. You and I. I am quite certain we deserve the credit on that.” 

Looking out to Arya as she wiped sweat off her brow, Sansa felt herself puff up her chest and sit up straighter. She had done this—fought for her life, fought for the person she wanted to be. Someday soon, she would get to sit amongst her family back in her home and  _ know  _ she had survived it. That, despite all that had occured, she could survive whatever came next, too. 

Myrcella found Catelyn standing on the walkway near the front of the castle, as if she watched out for long enough at some point maybe everyone she loved would come walking over the greenery and back into her arms. It was an appealing thought, quite frankly. Though, Catelyn had lost more than her. 

She thought about that familiar image again, the one Myrcella wasn’t certain was even true anymore so forged by her own memory it had become. Ned and Catelyn at the head table, bowing toward each other to say something, Catelyn pulling back with a look of unbelievable fondness and laughter edging at her lips. Myrcella had been a child then, but she knew now what that feeling felt like sitting and blooming inside your chest and it made the memory more tender. 

The thought of losing it and continuing on? Catelyn had always seemed as fierce and unbreakable as could be, but Myrcella understood the pain that may have pushed her all along. The fear of losing more love and what one would do to avoid it. 

“They’re preparing the food,” Myrcella said as she approached and stood beside the other woman. 

It seemed that Catelyn hadn’t noticed her, and she startled before quickly regaining her ground. “I lost track of time, I’m afraid. I will be in before too long.” 

Myrcella nodded, about to take her leave, when she couldn’t help but release the words that sprung to her lips next. “You and I, we haven’t talked about what happened when I spoke out in that tent. I feel as if somehow I have betrayed your trust, and it means too much to me to let it fall to the side. I hope…”

“It was smart,” Catelyn said as she turned. Her lips weren’t in a smile, but they weren’t as taut as they had seemed a minute earlier. “You are a lovely girl, Myrcella, and I have a love for you that I would never have imagined when my son first took you. It is a dangerous game you played, though.”

“Yet, it seems to have worked out, did it not? Soon, we will be home.” 

Catelyn nodded as she reached her face forward, letting the winds rush past her. “It is strange to think of all the time I spent here, these lands, thinking it home, and now I wish nothing more than to return to the North.” She sighed and clasped her hands in front of her. “I worry that the war won’t be won just by reclaiming what we have lost. I worry that your brother might send Lannister forces with us weakened or as soon as Stannis is taken care of. There are a million things that could keep this war spiraling forward.” 

Myrcella nodded. “I spend time thinking about it all, too,” she said. “Is it foolish of me to hope, though? Despite how everything in this world has taught me not to?” 

Catelyn sighed, and there was a warmth to the sound. “I want to tell you not to,” she said with a nod. “I fear you would not be you, though, if you didn’t. My son loves that woman quite terribly.” 

“I love him the same,” she said. 

“It is a peculiar thing,” Catelyn said. “Everything in the world would have had it so you two did not, and yet… feelings certainly can not be helped.” 

“If they could things might be easier.” Myrcella watched as the sun began to dip. She wished too that Robb would ride over that hill, that he would pull her up onto his horse and they would ride until there was only freedom surrounding them. She would hold her arms tightly around his waist, and she would breathe in the scent of him. 

“I am glad my son, my daughters,  _ you _ get to be happier despite all that has happened. I hope, despite worrying of the exact opposite, that it lasts.” 

Myrcella nodded, but she did not speak more. It was enough to revel in that feeling and hope for the same. 

* * *

Sansa was sitting with her back to the door, eyes washing over the landscape outside the window, when she heard someone rush into the room.

“They have it back!” Arya said, her voice breathless and her body shaking as Sansa turned over her shoulder to look. “Winterfell. Mom received a scroll by raven just now.” 

“We’ve won?” Sansa asked as her heart already soared. The reality was closer than ever before. Finally, after it all, they would be home. Arya nodded several times, quick and full of energy. “We get to go home.” 

Arya smiled wide and toothy, and Sansa beamed in reply. “Go on,” she said. “I know you want to keep spreading the news. Thank you for telling me.” 

“We have it back!” she said again, laughter in her tone, before she ran down the hallway and out of sight. 

* * *

The journey back was long, but there was something different about it as they all travelled further North. It was filled with a sense of anticipation, with a sense of joy. It was exhausting, and they had to be extra careful while on the road in the case of potential danger, but they knew where they were going and it filled them all with an inescapable energy. 

“Would you tell me your favorite thing about it?” Myrcella asked one night as they had stopped after a long day of riding and travelling. 

“It’s safe,” Sansa said after a long time of thinking it over. “It feels safe. I can be me there.” 

Myrcella took her hand then, and the two of them sat in silence. Perhaps they were thinking about the things they had endured, perhaps merely the things that were to come. Either way, they did it together. 

* * *

When Winterfell finally came into view, Myrcella failed to know what to do with herself. It stood large and impressive, and though she had seen it once many years ago, it was nothing quite like she imagined. It wasn’t beautiful quite the way Myrcella thought of other structures she had seen, but there was something unavoidable about Winterfell.

The feeling was amplified by Sansa’s sigh of relief as it came into view, Catelyn’s shoulders releasing, and the energy that began to pulse off of Arya in waves. They were home, and that sort of love was impossible to not let shade a place. Not to forget, Robb stood beyond those walls. He stood in his  _ home _ , and Myrcella wished she could kick the horse into a gallop as to arrive quicker and embrace him again. 

The gates opened, and they were all let in. The castle was destroyed some, that much was obvious, but there was a feeling of perseverance still. When she was finally standing on her feet, eyeing the whole space around her again, her eyes fell on Robb. 

Myrcella looked around to see who would run to him first, who would embrace him, but then she caught Sansa’s eye and she was nodding minutely, motioning for Myrcella to step forward and it felt right to run across the courtyard and straight into her future husband’s embrace. 

“You did it,” she whispered with a sense of relief, feeling her legs leave the ground as he held her tightly to himself. Her arms tightened around his neck, unwilling to let go. “You survived.” 

“I couldn’t very well come back as a spirit,” he replied with a chuckle. “I would hate to be stuck in the same outfit for the rest of eternity. Not to mention, I don’t think I could very well kiss you as one.”

“How romantic,” she joked, but her voice was too emotional to really take on the joking tone she had perhaps intended. She could feel nothing but elated. Her feet hit the ground again, and she reached up a palm to his scruffy cheek. “I don’t want to hold you from your family.” 

He shook his head. “You think after these years, after our trials together, you would have begun to realize you  _ are  _ my family as well.”

The thought left the back of her throat dry and the corners of her eyes damp. That was what she had wanted her whole life, right? To feel as if she belonged to something truly simply for who she was and not what the people around her perceived her to be. She had family who saw her for that, and she knew she was loved, but  _ here  _ in the walls of Winterfell she had the feeling it was going to be different now. 

“Welcome home,” he said as he brought his own palm to cover her own. It was warm, comforting.“This is your castle now.” 

The idea of being Queen while perhaps in the abstract had been something she had contemplated, it wasn’t until that moment standing with Robb, the sounds of a bustling home around her, that she realized what she had taken on. She would spend the majority of the rest of her days here. This would be her home, and she would help run it. 

While her and her mother hadn’t left on the best terms, Myrcella thought that maybe she would have been proud of her here. She wasn’t sure why it mattered, but the idea of that made her feel stronger. 

Myrcella smiled wide and bright. “Go hug your mother. I am sure she is barely holding herself together to wait this long. I am not quite sure you are aware, but she does love her children something quite terrible.” 

A look of pain crossed Robb’s face then, and Myrcella felt her breath catch. “What is it, my love?” 

“Rickon, he…” The words trailed off, and Myrcella knew the horrifying truth he couldn’t name all at once, no words needed. He had been here, but he hadn’t made it through the battle. 

This home,  _their_  home, they had been able to get it back but at a terrifying cost. Myrcella couldn’t imagine the idea of losing your younger brother like that. She thought briefly of Tommen, of having to hear that news and the horror that would take her heart. It was all she could do to bring Robb into her arms again and try to make him understand. 

It would be a long journey to recovery through all the trauma and tragedy they had waded through the last years of their life, but Myrcella felt calm knowing they could do it together at the very least. They would have the time now to firmly unpack the things they had been stowing away and carrying around on their shoulders.

* * *

Sansa didn’t know how to process the loss of Rickon. It seemed to weigh down on her or like a stone firmly planted in her gut. The terrible thing, the thing that pulled at her the most until she found herself holding back tearless sobs, was that she wasn’t sure she could remember quite what he looked like at first.

Home was different than she remembered, but she wasn’t sure if it was her or the place itself. She had the strangest feeling it might simply be time that made the relationship something new, something that wasn’t quite the same as the childhood remembrance she had been holding onto for years. The feeling of being back within the stones and walls, though, was enough to calm some of her aching heart. 

She had been there for a day or two, and she had yet to see him. At first he had not appeared, and then she had heard the news of her brother and wanted nothing more than to lay in her old bed and wallow. She wanted to think of all the memories she could hold onto and try to conjure more from the darkness. It was what Rickon deserved. 

Now, though, she found the urge to at least lay her eyes and know he was okay. It was hard to not let her mind slip to him. There was something easy about it after all their time spent together. He was in the training yard when she found him finally, planting arrows into a target with a fervor that was quite unearned for the time of day. 

“You failed to welcome me home,” she said after watching him land a few. There was a sweat on his brow, and his hair was bobbing into his face. It was quite beautiful, honestly. Even in anger, there was something sort of beautiful about him—truly like a temperamental sea. 

He didn’t turn to look at her, though his back tensed. His hand reached behind him for another arrow, and he placed it on the string to pull back to his chin, releasing it instantly and landing slightly to the left of center. “I figured you would want time with your family.” 

“Yes,” she said, “and yet you were not there.” 

Now, he stilled. It had been out of line perhaps for her to say it, but what was their relationship if not exactly that? She had spent nights on the open sea with him, lying on hay in barns, traipsing through the woods. What was left for her to say that he could possibly be surprised by? 

After a beat, he turned toward her and set his bow down. With his face on hers, she could see a barely healed wound that began at his neck and curved up to his cheek. Her hand begged to reach out and trail it as if that could help know what pain he was or wasn’t in. 

“Theon,” she said with a breath. 

His eyes fell to the floor, something almost near embarrassment. It looked ill-suited for him. “It looks worse than it is, I assure you.” 

Sansa hummed, and it was melodic in the space that held them apart. She decided to take a step closer. There was a lot of weight around them all that they would perhaps carry for some time, perhaps forever, and Sansa knew there would be days she was bound to wake up and feel crushed beneath the weight of it all. There seemed to be something brave in acknowledging the truth of that instead of hiding behind hopes and dreams. 

Though, she did not want to let go of some dreams. Maybe dreams was not the words for them anymore. Maybe she held onto what she  _ wanted _ , and she knew with enough will she just may be able to make it happen. If there was one thing she could hold onto from all the things she experienced, it was that she held power of her own to do what must be done. 

Looking at Theon across from her, the both of them still heavy with pain and longing, she decided she would much rather face all of that with him by her side. How lovely it would be to have someone the way Myrcella and Robb had each other, the way her parents used to hold one another. She would not hope for it anymore. If anything, she hoped to will it into existence. 

“Why did you not come to the yard?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “You had to know we had arrived. Why did you not come to see me in, to say hello?”

“How could I,” he said with a shake of his head. “Your brother is dead. I have tried to be better, but I will never…”

She sighed. “Theon.” There must have been something in the way she spoke his name because he looked up to meet her eyes with a sense of need.  _ How blue _ , she thought.  _ All this time, and I have only now noticed properly.  _ “I think the time has come to drop what you will or will not be. You have tried to be better, and is that not enough?”

“You shouldn’t be so kind to me, Sansa.” He scratched the side of his face, his eyes averted anywhere but her. “I can’t possibly deserve it.” 

“What happened to the arrogance? The belief that you knew something the world did not?” 

“The world beat me back,” he said. His lips curved slightly at the edges. “Was it not you who told me time and again how unattractive my arrogance was? That I was a boy playing at captain, never doing anything but for my own gain.”

“I did,” she said with a nod, and she could almost feel a smile coming on but the moment was too close to breaking. “Yet it seemed not to stop my affections for you despite all the world telling me they were unwise.” 

“I will never be good enough for  _ you _ ,” he said. “That I am sure of.” 

“Then try,” she ordered in return, feeling a power wash over her limbs that was nearly addictive. Maybe she understood it now, all those women vying to be a queen of some sort. If this is what it felt like to be in control, the way Theon’s eyes bore into her and made her feel unchallenged, beautiful, one of a kind, she could fathom the pull of it. “I do not ask for perfection. I am quite certain it does not exist. I simply ask for truth, for loyalty, for a return of my affections if I could be so lucky.” 

Theon stepped forward then, and they were mere inches apart. From here, Sansa could see into those eyes again, could feel his breath wash over her face. They were eye level, and it made it hard for her not to dive her hands into his hair and pull him close. That sort of boldness, however, was still foreign to her. 

He dipped closer until their lips were a single decision away from one another. “A return of affections has never been the problem, Lady Sansa.” 

“Princess,” she said with a sigh, but the word was barely off her lips before he had bridged the gap. Then she was holding his tunic in her palms, trying to keep this closeness for as long as she could manage. 

She thought it might feel strange to kiss him, to give herself to this person who she had once hated, but there was nothing strange about it at all.  _ This  _ wasn’t just easy, but being beside him made everything else seem easier as well. Sometimes, it really was the most surprising thing that ended up being what you needed most. 

Theon pulled back first, Sansa chasing his lips for a second before pulling back and composing herself. The smirk was on his lips now, and she narrowed her eyes at the gesture. Then it turned to a smile, and she found herself giggling. 

“Your brother will still kill me if he found out I’d been so improper with his sister.” 

“Let us avoid that then,” Sansa said. “I would hate to have to say goodbye again.” 

He shook his head, and though the words came out joking, she felt like there was something deeper running through them, a truth that stood faithful for both of them. “I have no plans of leaving you ever again if I can help it.” 

* * *

“I truly cannot get over how stunning Winterfell becomes after seeing it through your eyes,” Myrcella said as they walked through the woods. She was grateful for the furs helping keep her warm with her disposition still not settled quite to the climate.

Robb stopped in the woods and pointed to a tree to their right. “Once when we were younger Theon climbed up it to see how far he could see and fell out. Though he managed to fall on me on the way down, breaking my arm.” 

Myrcella laughed as she pictured the image of younger them’s in these very woods. The things they would get up to and the stories they could weave in the magic this space seemed to provide. 

“I am glad you find it beautiful, though,” he said. “I did worry we would arrive and suddenly you would despise these walls and the people. I found it quite hard to imagine, but I suppose I was too nervous you would get here and not want to marry me any longer.” 

“Impossible,” she said as they continued their path. As they moved forward, she could see the red leaves of the Godswood tree come into view. “I, unfortunately, would still marry you if it meant we were on the run for the rest of our lives.”

“You always sound so overjoyed to love me,” he joked through a shake of his head. “It does wonders for my confidence.” 

She buried her head into the furs of his shoulder, trying to push all of her love into him as juvenile a concept as it may seem. These days, she found she could revel untroubled into the juvenile if she so wished it. People may simply be fools in love, and there had been little time in Myrcella’s life where she ever got to fully embrace the lightness of a feeling like love. 

“I love you,” she mumbled into the fur, though the words were quite undecipherable. He must have known anyways because he tipped his head to kiss her hair. 

“Here we are,” he declared as the pair stopped. 

The space was striking, and Myrcella felt her breath halt briefly as she eyed the deep red of the leaves despite the snow around them. The face of the bark seemed to stare back at her, and while she did not feel fully welcome here she did not feel  _ un _ welcome. It was like first meeting a person, understanding that they may become important to you but they were not  _ yet _ . There was ground to cover before one got there. 

“My mother and father used to sit underneath it together,” Robb said wistfully. “I know my mother never grew fully comfortable here, but I think it was a space the two of them felt as if they could escape us all and truly discuss matters unbothered. Or maybe it was simply a comfortable spot for them to share in silence.”

Myrcella stepped forward toward the tree, and once she stood beside it she couldn't help but bring her palm up against the surface. There was something close to magical about it. 

“What did it mean to you?” she asked. 

“I prayed, sometimes,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you for what, though, because I can barely recall. Unimportant things, I’m sure. It felt safe here always, though, like if I was upset or needed guidance there was someone to listen.” 

“It offered you comfort.” 

He nodded. 

“Thank you,” she whispered to the tree. 

This movement, too, was perhaps a bit silly, but she felt like she needed to. There were times she would look at Robb, and the feeling would overtake Myrcella that she wished she had known him her whole life simply to have been there for him. She wished she could have known him all her life to share every memory, every moment, to know the ins and outs of one another completely. Perhaps they would have been different people, though, and Myrcella found she liked them exactly the way they were. 

“We will be married here if that’s agreeable to you,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin any of your own dreams on the day, but it is how it has been done for those of the North.” 

“I would like to be married here, then,” she said. “I am to be the North’s Queen, afterall. It would only be right for me to carry the traditions. I would hate to not be accepted by my people.” 

“Oh,” he said as he stepped behind her, and she could feel his chest against her back. She leaned into the warmth, “the people will not be able to stop themselves from loving you.”

“Myrcella Stark,” she drawled slowly. “It may not have the exact ring I was hoping for.” 

“I think it sounds perfect.” He kissed the back of her neck, and it made her shiver. “My wife. That sounds even better.” 

“You are a romantic,” she said as she turned in his arms. “Who would have thought it of the King of the North. The Young Wolf.” 

“The Lady Lioness,” he said in return. “You have a name, too. Do you not like romance? That wasn’t the impression I saw of you.” 

“Oh, I do love it,” she said. “To be truly loved. How few are that lucky.”

“Lucky,” he agreed with a kiss to her nose. “We are indeed lucky.”

* * *

The wedding, for all its planning and anticipation, seemed to pass in a flash. Myrcella felt beautiful in the dress her and Sansa spent hours getting every detail perfect of. While her mother and brother respectfully could not leave King’s Landing, Myrcella was surprised and delighted to find her father said he would make the visit.

“You were beautiful,” he said later as they feasted in the hall. He laid a kiss on her cheek, and she felt warm and beyond happy. 

Robb was talking to his mother on the other side, and Myrcella was happy to make Jaime pull up a chair. 

“How are mother? How is Tommen?” she asked, needing the news. “I knew it was far-fetched to hope for mother going back to Casterly Rock, and yet I thought there was a chance I may have gotten through to her, yet.” 

“She wants you to be happy. She truly does,” Jaime said. He ran a hair over his facial hair which was beginning to whiten and gray. The age on him seemed strange, but he wore it just as well as he had always worn his younger handsome nature. “I simply fear she fails to understand you at times. As much as she loves you, you are not much like her in nature.” 

Myrcella worked her bottom lip between her teeth and twisted her body more fully toward him. “So, tensions are high?” she asked. 

His face wilted. “We shouldn’t discuss such things on your wedding day.” He paused then, seeing the curiosity still in her eyes perhaps. “I think your mother simply isn’t used to another woman having more power over her children. Margaery and Tommen do seem to get on famously, after all. I tried to get her to return to Casterly Rock, but…” 

His words trailed off, and Myrcella turned to see where his gaze laid. His eyes were yearning, and he was there and not there. Memory and feelings seemed to have a hold on him. When Myrcella gazed where he was looking, she noticed Brienne in the corner of the room. What a curious thought, and yet it didn’t shock her as much as Myrcella assumed it might shock others. 

“Are you happy?” she asked, though she thought she might already know the answer to it.

“I…” he trailed off again. 

She reached forward and covered his hand in her own. “You deserve to be,” she said. “Whatever sins you believe yourself to have committed, whatever wrongs you have done, you are good at your core. I know it. If mother can’t see that, if she doesn’t appreciate it… I want you to be happy. I want you to have someone who does.”

His eyes returned to his daughter’s, and he gave her a soft sort of smile. “You are good still, I see. The world has failed to stamp any of it out of you. What a beautiful thing. I am quite proud of you, though I know I might not hold any right to be.” He pushed back from his chair, then. “Enjoy your time with your husband. I have stolen too much of it. I love you, sweetling.” 

She smiled wide as he went to kiss her cheek, and she watched him walk away across the room as she turned back toward her husband who was waiting for her. She knew she was allowed to love him freely now, but it still seemed strange to get to reach across the chair and kiss him if she wanted. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked. 

“In the ceremony, there were a few sections we might have amended.” She had a teasing smile on her lips, and she could tell she had surprised him. It was one of her favorite sensations still, and she was sure she would fail to tire of it. 

“Please do share what you mean,” he said through a smile of his own. 

“Who comes to claim her?” she asked. “I know it might be a bit of a stretch, but it made me think of you stealing me out of that caravan years ago. I was being claimed by a Northern King then without any say in it.” 

“Will I ever stop apologizing for stealing you?” he asked. “Would you have it any different?” 

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I would not have done a second of it differently given the option. I am yours, anyways.” 

“You are mine, too,” he agreed. 

“Come dance with me, husband.” She held onto his hand tightly, tugging him out onto the floor with her. The music grew around them, and she felt safe in his arms. She felt loved. 

* * *

Robb kissed up her stomach and over long stretches of pale skin. She breathed with every touch, with every grace of him against her.

“I love you,” she said with an arched back and a quivering breast. 

“You are…” he trailed off, unable to find words, but she could feel it in his movements. She could feel it in the way his eyes drank her in and his tongue wrote poems into her skin.  _ Perfection. Beautiful.  _ “Everything,” he said eventually in a wistful sort of way that left Myrcella wanting, aching, and feeling loved all at once. 

* * *

“At some point,” Myrcella said as she sat at the desk she now truly called hers, scrolls at her side and notes from Winterfell’s history to her left as she tried to learn what she must to help run the place. Usually, Catelyn was able to help guide her but she was in a forlorn state the last few days, and sometimes they found she needed silence and solitude, “you will have to let your sister marry.”

Robb sighed as he fell into a chair across from her. “I am fully aware, but I hate to think of pushing her into another arrangement for politics.” 

Myrcella shrugged. “We are lucky enough for love. Why not let your sister have it, too.” 

His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” 

“Please tell me you are not truly that oblivious to what is happening around you.” She waited a beat, but his face remained the same. “Your sister is quite in love with Theon Greyjoy, and I fear he is quite in love right back. Did you truly not know they have been sneaking around to kiss in corridors?”  
“That’s…” he trailed off, struggling for his words, “ _improper._ ”

“That’s exactly what we did, once.” 

“Not before we were betrothed.” 

Myrcella rolled her eyes. “I fear you miss the point, dear. Would a proposal between the future of the Iron Islands and your sister be so poor? If you hate to have her go so far, there are holdfasts that have become abandoned since the war.” 

“Truthfully, I had never contemplated that these decisions would be up to me.” 

“Perhaps you should ask her, then,” Myrcella said. “It might be nice to let her have some choice in her future. It is sad to say she hasn’t gotten much.” 

“Sometimes I worry you have grown too close with Sansa,” he said with a shake of his head, though there was a smile on his lips. “What will happen if you ever have to choose between us some day?”  
“Oh, don’t worry it isn’t a choice at all.” She leaned forward on the desk, resting her chin on her hand. “I would obviously choose your sister.” 

He humphed, but there was affection in the sound and soon he was moving forward to kiss her lips. Myrcella wished desperately there was no desk between them at all. 

* * *

While at first intimidating, Myrcella had grown to have a fondness for the crypts. On Robb’s dark and blue days, he liked to walk through them lighting candles. Some days he wanted only the solitude of the gestures. Others, he wanted her by his side. She was happy to give him whatever he wanted.

They stood now in front of Ned Stark’s statue, and Myrcella tried to wrack her brain to remember if it was a good likeness or not. It felt so far away that he had been the hand to her once father and king. To when her and Sansa were both trapped there before they would be stolen by men who would also steal their hearts. 

“Do you think he would have liked me?” she asked. 

Robb’s eyes remained on the statue, though he nodded several times before releasing a soft sigh. His hand found hers. “I truly think he would. He would have thought you strong and beautiful. Most likely, he would have thought you too good for me.” 

She leaned into his side, resting her head on his shoulder and thinking about the man that would have become a father to her, too. If there was something beyond this world, she hoped he had found some sort of peace there. 

“I doubt that,” she said. “You are a truly good man.” 

They sat in their silence, basking in it, enjoying it, hoping to find some peace in it. 

* * *

The two of them were still lying in bed when there was a knock at the door with the words from the wall. While Jon sent words every so often upon their arrival back in Winterfell, it was still sporadic. The Lord Commander seemed to lack a fondness for language, seeing it more as a burden to the point then a tool for conversation. Myrcella found it sort of endearing, really, and she hoped she would get to meet him before long.

“Come in,” Robb called once she had wrapped herself in her morning robes and he was up on his feet. He retrieved the scroll with a word of thanks and fell back into bed with his wife. They kissed lazily, the sun of the morning still creeping in through the windows, and Myrcella felt at peace. She would never get tired of these little moments and of the peace they could share. 

“What does Lord Commander Jon Snow have to say?” she asked with a quirk of her brow. 

Robb leaned forward and pushed the robes down, kissing at her bare shoulder. “How am I supposed to care a wink about any of it when you are in front of me so very enticing, Queen Stark.” 

“I do think I will never tire of that,” Myrcella said. “I thought I might rather miss being Baratheon, but I do without the name fine. I was always struggling to fit myself—Lannister or Baratheon, and while I still feel them within me Stark seems to fit better than either of them ever did.” 

“I may have some bias,” he said as he kissed his way up from her shoulder to her neck to the soft spot behind her ear where he paused to continue his whispers, “but I agree wholeheartedly.” 

He grabbed her around the waist, and she squealed as he pulled her fully to him. She turned around in his grasp and straddled his waist, her blonde hair cascading around them in a curtain. She bent forward to place a sound kiss on his lips, trailing a finger over his stubble on his way. 

“You are quite beautiful, do you know that?” she whispered. 

“I believe others prefer the term  _ handsome _ . Dashing, perhaps? You may be the only one who insists on beautiful.” 

“You are,” she continued with a nod of her head before pushing back up to sit on her heels, his waist still below her. She held out a hand for the letter. “Let me read word from my good-brother.” 

Robb offered the letter and let his hands fall to her waist in their absence of something to hold. The way he rubbed his thumbs over her hips was rather distracting. 

“Dear Robb,” she began, adding a bit of husk to her voice for dramatic effect that left him laughing, “Bran has found his way…” Her words died off, and the laughter did with it. She scurried off of his lap to stand, and he sat up quickly. “Bran has found his way from the North beyond the wall to Castle Black where he is safe now. There is a greater war coming, one for the living against the dead, that I hope to discuss when I escort Bran home to you all. Without as many soldiers as we can gather, death seems inevitable. We will discuss further upon my return home. Jon Snow.” 

The scroll dropped from her fingers to Robb’s hand who was waiting for it. His brow was already crushed together as his eyes devoured the words. It was hard to believe only a minute ago they had been unaware of the dangers that could befall them all again. They were happy with no death on the horizon. 

“What enemy could he possibly mean?” Robb asked as his eyes searched for some answer in the phrases they had missed. 

“Your brother certainly has a flair for the dramatics,” she began, “and an aversion for simple answers.” 

Robb looked up, and there was the dare for a smile. “Bran, though.” 

She beamed. “He’s alive. He’s coming home. So is Jon. All of you Starks under one roof again. That  _ is  _ good despite the fear of bad that may seem to be begging for our doorstep.” 

The emotions flashed over Robb’s face, so many Myrcella didn’t think she could hold them all at first, but then she began to pick them apart. Either way, she stepped closer to hold his face to her stomach and run her fingers through his hair. 

“Maybe war will never end,” Robb said in a whisper. 

Myrcella shook her head before realizing he probably could not see it. “No. No, there  _ has  _ to be an end otherwise what is the point. I feel no fear over Jon’s words, Robb. We have done it,  _ you  _ have done it before, and we can do it again.”

He pulled back to kiss at her stomach, and then he looked up to her eyes. “We will have to begin planning for the worst. Our lives may change again.” 

Myrcella reached down to kiss his lips, and he pulled her back onto his lap. “Then change they must. It will not break us apart. It will not break your family apart. What was it you told me your father always said?” 

“The pack survives.” 

“Aye,” she said in an imitation of his voice, getting the barest of smiles. “The pack survives. We will, whatever comes next. You have me, and I have you for all our days and the days that come after that.” 

“I love you,” Robb said like a man in awe, and Myrcella soaked the thought up. 

“And I you.” She kissed his lips, breathing him in, and she knew whatever was on the horizon they would be able to handle it together. 

There was no fear of the future. Not with Robb at her side, with the Starks at her back, with Winterfell as her home. No fear at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this seems like the story might continue, but i want to assure everyone this is where it all ends. i wanted to allude to the fact that more battles and war and conflicts may come, but they have gotten some time to grieve and love and they face it all stronger because of that. you are welcome to think whatever you like on what transpires after this chapter. 
> 
> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!!! i love you all <3

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


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